


On the Nature of Miracles

by wanderingmagpie



Series: No Benevolent Gods [1]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Miracle Reveal, Post-Season/Series 04, Temporary Character Death, chloe dies but she's fine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25534369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderingmagpie/pseuds/wanderingmagpie
Summary: After finding out that the love of her life was the Devil himself, Chloe thought that the world didn't have any more curveballs to throw at her.She was wrong.
Relationships: Chloe Decker & Mazikeen, Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Series: No Benevolent Gods [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1887910
Comments: 141
Kudos: 235





	1. As Black as the End

Power lies just beyond her reach. The rumble of thunder courses through her veins without breaking the surface tension of her skin. Weariness wraps her in its hold and doesn’t let go. The eons drag behind her. She is more than her bones and bereft all the same. Something is lacking. She is stagnant. Frozen. Affect without effect; a force waiting to be acted upon.

Waiting. It’s all she does.

* * *

Hell is, to put it simply, a mess. Lucifer returns to complete anarchy, even by Hell's standards. When he arrives, Dromos and his ilk are already spreading dissent through the ranks, Lilith is on the lam, and Pandæmonium is a smouldering pile of ash.

Demon hunts—and the resulting public executions—quash most of the unrest. Rebuilding the city will keep the demons occupied for a few decades, so he flies up to his throne, leaving threats of dire punishment hanging over their heads. Their king has returned, and he is not happy.

Hell thoroughly dealt with, the ache in his chest to rises to the forefront of his mind. Chloe. The look on her face when he left her behind will be burned into his mind for eternity. It’s the only thing he can think about whenever he has a moment of quiet. Somehow she loves him, despite everything, despite knowing exactly who he is, and he had to leave her. He always seems to hurt her in some way or another. But she'll move on eventually. There's no moving on for Lucifer though; there's nothing to move on _to._ Hell never changes, after all.

* * *

Chloe can’t bring herself to return to the penthouse until a week after Lucifer left her on the balcony. She steps out of the elevator as the setting sun dips below the cover of the rooftop. Shattered glass and spilled liquor refract the waning light and bathe the penthouse in gold. It’s light from a star that Lucifer himself created but will never see again. It's breathtaking; it's devastating.

She finds a broom and a dustpan tucked away in a storage closet. They look like they’ve never been used and have collected dust themselves. She sweeps up the broken glass and lets the routine calm her fragmented thoughts. 

Maybe this is for the best. Maybe not knowing what she missed out on will be better in the long run. Even if things had worked out between them, they would only ever have the rest of her mortal life together. In every instance, an eternity apart would always await them at the end. She could never be more than a speck in his existence, a footnote in the ongoing story of his long, long life. She can't compete with his infinity.

A mop is harder to locate, so she gathers a stack of towels from the bathroom. They’re plush and soft and she’d be tempted to take one home if it wouldn’t remind her of him every time she used it. They soak up the spilled alcohol and she silently apologizes for using them in this way.

Only after the sun sinks below the horizon does she turn on the lights. She rights lamps and chairs and drapes them in sheets when she’s done. Miraculously, the piano lays untouched by the demons’ rampage. She covers it up as well.

The bedroom is less of a mess, and doesn’t take much more than righting the bedsheets before it’s in order again. She hesitates at the safe before closing it as well. Its lock falls into place with a click.

Cleaning finished, she steps back out into the main room and takes in the penthouse. It’s spotless, with all signs of demon activity scrubbed away. This particular view, with white sheets covering the furniture, still gives rise to a small swell of panic in her chest. It’s instinct at this point, even though Lucifer is already gone, and she pushes it down. She makes her way to the elevator, and with one last look, leaves the penthouse behind.

Her own apartment is empty when she gets home. Dan has Trixie, so there is no babysitter to dismiss, no sleepy hellos or goodnights waiting for her. Alone and with nothing to distract her from her thoughts, grief lodges in her throat. Her heart’s mournful drumbeat keeps time with the ache behind her eyes.

She digs up a necklace from the drawer of her nightstand—the one Lucifer gave her for her birthday—and slips it back on. Its weight settles against her sternum with a comforting familiarity. She never realized how much she missed it until now. She hasn’t worn it since she took it off for Marcus, at a time when being with Lucifer seemed out of her reach. Now, he’s out of reach in a completely different way. All she has left of him are a necklace, an empty penthouse, and the stars in the sky.

* * *

The front door swings open and startles Chloe out of her research-induced haze. Maze stands at her door with a six-pack of IPA and a raised eyebrow.

“I thought we were on for drinks tonight.” Maze twirls a set of keys around a finger. Chloe really needs to get those back. “But it looks like you’re busy.”

Chloe glances at the books she has spread out on the countertop. “You’re right. I’m sorry, Maze. It completely slipped my mind.”

“Clearly.” Maze’s eyes rove over the books. “It’s been months. You’re still reading this stuff? C’mon Decker, you used to be fun. Sort of.”

Chloe snorts. “I could say the same for you. Live-in aunt doesn’t exactly sound like Hell’s finest torturer.”

“Eh, Charlie’s a quick study. He had a diaper blowout all over Amenadiel yesterday. That kid’ll be popping out eyeballs in no time.”

“I’m sure Linda would love that,” Chloe says with a roll of her eyes.

Maze eyes the books on the counter again. “Y’know, Linda says it’s not healthy for humans to hold on to things like this.”

Chloe raises an eyebrow. “But it’s fine for demons?”

“Yeah well,” Maze places the six-pack on the counter and drops herself onto a stool, “you’re not the only one he left behind.”

“Maze…”

Chloe can see herself in the bags under Maze’s eyes, the downward pull of her mouth, the furrow of her brow. Chloe has ferried those same sleepless nights. She too struggles with a grief so deep that she could drown in it.

“It’s fine, I’m over it,” Maze says. “I’d rather be here anyway. Someone has to teach Charlie to fight dirty, and it sure as hell won’t be Amenadiel.”

Chloe huffs a laugh as Maze cracks open a bottle and hands it to her.

“Now, let’s get something else going other than your... weird research project.” Maze drags a book towards her that lies open to a page on harpies. “What is this?”

Chloe stacks the books in question to make room on the counter, carefully making note of page numbers as she goes. “It’s celestial stuff, I think. I’ve been trying to figure out what’s real and what’s not. I don’t have a lot to go off of, and I’m not exactly looking for help from the Catholic Church these days,” she says.

Maze gives her a jerky nod. “Well, you can lay off the monster myths. Vampires, werewolves, bigfoot, all those run of the mill mythological creatures—those are just demons.” Maze tilts her head to the side. “Well, most of them anyway. A few of them were from before our time.”

Chloe pauses, her beer bottle halfway to her lips. “Before? You mean before angels, demons, God, everything?”

“Nah, before demons. Some of God’s earlier creations were… a bit wild. He went through an experimental phase: expanding beyond three dimensions just for kicks, stuff like that. I met a few of them before—” Maze cuts herself off and picks at the label on her beer bottle. “Lovecraft was onto something, no matter how much of a bastard he was. He’s in Hell, by the way. I had fun with him.”

“I… see.” Who Maze is— _what_ she is and everything she’s seen—is still a lot to take in sometimes.

“What I’m trying to say is… I know you’re not gonna stop just because I tell you to. I get that investigating this stuff is how you deal with it, but don’t let it take over your life. Lucifer wouldn’t want that.”

And right there lies the crux of the issue. Some small part of her hopes that if she tries hard enough, she can find a way to bring him home. As if she could find the solution to a problem that an angel and a demon, with thousands of years of experience behind them, could not. Maze is right.

“That’s… surprisingly insightful of you,” Chloe mumbles, and Maze shrugs.

“Curse of living with a therapist, I guess. You won’t get any more out of me, though. I’m not here for feelings, I’m here to get you wasted.” Maze grins and raises her bottle. “A toast,” she says, “to the Old Ones and the weird little universe we live in.”

Chloe smiles and raises her bottle in turn. “To the universe.”

* * *

Traffic is unseasonably light as Chloe drives home from work. She hums along to the radio as she cruises down the highway. The precinct had started stocking her favourite coffee and Ella brought in lemon bars today. The smile she gave Chloe was just a touch too wide to be fuelled by anything but concern, but Chloe appreciated the gesture nonetheless.

The police radio crackles to life. _"Suspect on the run, last seen driving a white Toyota Corolla, license plate—"_

Her eye catches on the vehicle in front of her. It’s a white Corolla, and her grip on the wheel tightens as its license plate is read out over the radio. The car they're looking for is right in front of her. 

She grabs her radio. "Dispatch, this is unit 831 in pursuit of the vehicle. Requesting backup to follow." 

_"Copy, 831. Suspect is armed, proceed with caution."_

"Roger.”

She flicks on her siren. The car swerves in front of her before cutting in front of the truck in the next lane. The car almost clips another vehicle, who slams on the brakes just in time to avoid an accident. The suspect is making for the next exit. Chloe follows close behind.

She pursues the car to an industrial area, where the driver skids into a parking lot. The car crashes into the front gate of a warehouse and a man jumps out, fleeing onto the property on foot. Chloe blocks in the Corolla with her cruiser and runs after him. She draws her gun, keeping it low.

The man ducks behind the warehouse. She rounds the corner just as he throws open a side door with a key card. She catches the door before it closes. Raising her gun, she slips through the door. Only a few nearby rows of lights are on, revealing several rows of pallet racks that extend into the darkness of the warehouse. It reminds her a little too much of hiding from Malcolm in an aircraft hangar, and it puts her on edge. It is silent, save for her own quiet footfalls and shallow breathing.

The squeak of shoes sounds off to the left and she whips around to face her suspect.

"Freeze—!"

Two shots ring out. A sharp, familiar agony bites into her neck and she crumples like a marionette with cut strings. Her head bounces off the polished concrete and her vision goes white. Her lungs won’t cooperate. She tries to reach for her neck, but her arm doesn’t move. She can’t even feel it. She can’t feel her body. Her head lolls to the side against her will. Something is wrong.

Her heartbeat is frantic and irregular against her ribcage. It struggles in skips and thuds that would knock the breath out of her if she could only just _breathe._ She begs her lungs to move, to take in a breath, but they won’t function. She’s suffocating. Her vision tunnels and the world falls out of focus, the sound of her heart becoming dull and distant in her ears.

“—key?”

The ground is wrenched out from under her and she plummets into ash and darkness. Gone is the warehouse around her; in its place are black rock and falling ash. There is nothing here but desolation: the burned-out husk of a blazing inferno. Panic claws at her stomach as the walls push in on her. She can’t be here. She’s trapped and alone and she needs to— 

The warehouse lights blind Chloe from above. She takes gasping gulps of air as her racing heart pounds in her chest. She can breathe again. Relief floods through her as her fingers, arms, legs move at her command. She feels along the column of her throat. Where a bullet wound should be is nothing but blood-slick skin. Her heart beats strong but fast under her fingertips. 

She pushes herself up to a sitting position and the sound of metal hitting concrete catches her attention. A bullet without its casing lies beside her, red with blood and still hot to the touch. 

That’s impossible. 

She was shot. She felt the bullet’s impact, felt the life drain out of her as she lay on the floor, paralyzed and terrified. She should be dead. Was this divine intervention? Was it something else?

A drop of blood runs down her back and she cringes at the sensation. What she does know is that she can’t leave a pool of her own blood here. Her coat already thoroughly ruined, she pulls it off and sops up the mess. The coat absorbs most of it, and she smears the rest until it’s barely noticeable. She slips the bullet in her pocket. That will have to do.

Her legs shake like a newborn fawn as she tries to stand. Her blood-soaked blouse sticks to her torso, still warm but rapidly cooling. Using the pallet racks for balance, she stumbles out of the warehouse and out into a cool breeze. She shivers. It shouldn't be this cold, not in the early evening, not in LA. _Shock._ She’s going into shock.

Once she makes it back to her car, she radios dispatch, letting them know that the suspect escaped. She takes a moment—just a moment, she tells herself—to calm her breathing, but by the time she turns the key in the ignition, the waning daylight has disappeared from the horizon. She really shouldn't be driving right now, but she can't quite bring herself to care.

An hour later, Chloe stumbles into her apartment and strips at the door. She doesn’t have Trixie tonight, thank—well, not Lucifer’s dad for that. She won’t give him the credit. Her bloody clothes go to the bottom of her hamper to keep them from prying eyes. The back of her sock drawer is as good a place as any for the bullet, so she leaves it there for when she's in the right frame of mind to deal with it.

The shower banishes the cold she’s felt since the warehouse and she cranks the heat up until it burns. Reddish-orange water circles the drain. She scrubs at her skin as if getting rid of the evidence will change what happened to her.

If Chloe Decker falls in a warehouse and doesn’t die, was she really shot?

After her shower, she looks herself over in the mirror. She prods at her neck, feeling for anything out of the ordinary, but there’s nothing. There’s not a single trace to show for what just happened to her. She should be dead right now. This should be impossible. If she’s being honest with herself though, impossible had become her normal when she saw her partner with the face of the Devil. Impossible had been a part of her life since she first walked through the doors of Lux. 

If the frown lines on her face seem to have vanished, she pretends not to notice. It’s a trick of the light, her own frazzled mind playing with her imagination. She presses a hand over her heart. It beats steady and strong, if a little fast, under her palm. She can ignore what happened, but it doesn't change the fact that it did. She had been shot, until she wasn’t, and for a brief moment, she was somewhere else. There was no way that place was Heaven. This celestial stuff isn’t something she can handle herself, so she sends a text to Maze.

_Something happened. It's urgent. Call me when you can._

* * *

Lucifer is sitting listlessly on his throne when he feels it. The fabric of Hell bends and distorts before smoothing over once more. Something has slipped out. He grips the armrests of his throne until the basalt pillars crack under his hands. Whoever dared to defy him will pay. He'll crush them. He may have stepped away from his post for a few years, but he is still their king. 

He slips out of Pandæmonium on foot, and only when the city is no longer visible behind him does he take flight. He'll solve this quickly: pop up to Earth and drag the treasonous cretin back, and the demons will be none the wiser.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome to my first longfic in *checks notes* 4 years! i've been working on this on and off since february and i'm stoked to finally start sharing it. the first draft is finished and i'll be posting the chapters as i finish editing. hoping to get this all up before 5a drops. enjoy my weird little take on the miracle thing!


	2. The Fire in Which We Burn

The ravine twists and turns and splinters off until she loses all sense of direction. Disturbed ash trails behind her, curling and dancing through the air in her wake. Her footfalls echo off the walls, too loud in her own ears. There is not a rustle nor a scuttle nor a whisper of wind. It is completely, utterly silent. The ravine winds around a corner once more and she hits a dead end. The looming rock hems her in on all sides but one. She doesn’t want to turn back again.

She looks to the heavens. The empty void above is so different from the band of stars in the Earth’s night sky. She misses them. She misses a lot of things. Here, nothing ever changes. There is no day, no true night; only a dim light makes it possible to see where the ravine ends and the sky begins. Maybe there’s something up there. Scaling the dizzying heights of the ravine wall may be the only way out.

Her feet ache and burn but she doesn't dare stop for long. She climbs up the wall, careful not to lose her balance on the smooth stone. The strange uniformity of the stone pillars makes for easy footing, but leaves nothing for her hands to grab on to. Her ascent is slow and shaky, and she's breathing hard by the time she crests the top. She looks out to the world beyond, and her stomach drops out. 

Stretching off in every direction are more ravines of the same black rock. They snake and weave around each other into infinity. This can’t be all there is. How can there be nothing? She turns in a circle and scans the horizon. Her chest grows tight as panic threatens to return in full. She almost gives in to the feeling when she spots it.

A lone pillar reaches up into the black sky, taller than any mountain. Dim light shines down on it from above. She has no idea what it is, or how it could possibly be so tall, but it’s something to work towards in this bleak landscape. There has to be something there. She can’t afford for there not to be.

The rocky path between ravines is wide enough to walk along if she's careful. She follows the narrow trail, occasionally climbing down and back up onto another when they start to bend in the wrong direction. Her legs burn with exertion that leaves her panting in the unrelenting heat.

A deep, bassy trill echoes up from one of the chasms and she freezes. She doesn't dare breathe in the silence that follows. She scrambles down into a nearby crevice as quietly as she can and squeezes into a small space between two stone pillars. Her heart beats loud and fast in her ears.

Something big skitters up a nearby wall. She presses herself harder into her hiding spot and holds her breath.

* * *

Chloe stares at the ceiling above her. She didn’t go back. She's in her bedroom. It was just a dream. 

She lays a hand over her eyes and tries to shake off the lingering fear. Peeking through her fingers at her alarm clock, she groans at the time. It’s 4am. There's no way she's getting back to sleep now. 

A shiver wracks through her body. The room is cold, frigid even, and the blankets aren’t doing anything to keep the heat in. She slips out of bed and her head throbs in protest at the shift in position. Shaking from a mix of adrenaline and chills, she checks the thermostat downstairs. It rests as its usual 70 degrees. Strange. She shuffles to the fireplace and turns it on. Grabbing a throw blanket, she curls up on the floor in front of the couch. 

The firelight flickers in a dance of chemical change and self-destruction, ever careening towards its end. Burning bright, and dying out all the sooner because of it. The heat hits her face, but she doesn’t feel warm. She can't help but wonder if Lucifer’s view from Hell is anything similar. His absence is like a missing limb. At work, she still catches herself turning to the empty space beside her, a reprimand on her tongue for a quip that isn’t coming. It happens less often now. She’s getting used to his absence. She doesn’t want to. 

Only when the sun streams through the blinds does she get up. Her body protests her decision to take the floor in favour of the couch as she shakes off her residual chill. A dull headache throbs at her temples and she eyes the coffee machine in the kitchen. She'll definitely need an extra cup to get through today. She gets ready in quick order and once her travel mug is ready, she heads out the door. 

Outside of the apartment, a shaggy black dog sleeps in the shade of the building’s overhang. She hesitates as she passes. The LA sun isn’t ideal for a dog with such a heavy coat. There isn't anyone else around and she can't see a collar. She checks the time. There are still a few minutes to spare, so she runs back inside. In a bottom kitchen cabinet is a large mixing bowl, an unused housewarming gift from her mother, which she pulls out.. She fills it with water and brings it out. This should tide the dog over for the day.

“We’ll get you back to your owner,” she murmurs as she places the bowl down. The dog raises its head but doesn’t move from its spot in the shade.

She calls the SPCA as she gets into her car. In the rearview mirror, the dog laps at the water dish as she drives away.

Even after tending to the dog, Chloe still arrives to work with a bit of time to spare. She’s currently between cases, the last one involving a cheating couple who killed their spouses. It was a headache to solve, but the paperwork still needs to be finished, and she’s glad for it. It’s something to keep her mind occupied while she waits for the next body to drop. That’s all she seems to be able to do these days: distractions upon distractions to avoid thinking too hard about the Lucifer-shaped hole in her life.

An hour into the day, Maze frog marches a roughed-up suspect through the precinct. Chloe’s going to have to have a talk with her about proper protocol again. The man makes eye contact as they pass and Chloe tenses up at the sight of him. It’s the same man from the warehouse. Her hand claps to her neck without conscious thought. 

“What the fuck, I shot you!”

Maze yanks the guy backwards. “You did what now?” she growls, and the man flinches away.

“I—um…”

Maze shoves him forward once more and he stumbles. Chloe doesn’t take her eyes off of him as he is led away. Everything that happened in the warehouse rushes back with horrifying clarity. Her struggling heart failing to keep its tempo. Her frantic need for air that wouldn’t enter her lungs. She had been paralyzed by the bullet, she knows that now. Her hand stays clasped to the side of her neck. Her pulse flutters under her fingertips and helps ground her. 

“What was that about?” Ella asks. 

Chloe snaps to attention. Ella has taken up residence in the seat beside her desk, a file in her lap. Chloe hadn’t even noticed her walk up. 

She squeezes her jittery hands together to stop them from shaking. “Nothing. What is it?”

Ella looks to her clasped hands with a frown, but doesn't say anything. “I just talked to the lieutenant and we’ve got a new case. I think you’ll like this one.” She grins and slaps the file on the desk. Chloe can almost hear the little drum roll that is surely playing out in her head. “We’ve got another blood pool."

Chloe snatches up the file. A blood pool was found, and so soon after she was shot? That can’t be a coincidence. Her cleanup of the scene last night was pretty hasty, but she thought it had been good enough. If it’s hers, she needs to do some sort of damage control, or quit her job and flee to Canada. Possibly both.

“I knew you’d be interested! Especially with how the last one ended. Y’know, I thought it was all over after the Mayan, but I guess it was wishful thinking to expect Kinley’s weirdo cult to die out so easily, right?”

“Sure,” Chloe replies absently. She finds the location on the second page. The address is nowhere near where she was shot. She breathes out a sigh of relief that she immediately feels guilty for. It wasn’t her, but a blood pool with a missing body means that a demon is here. Lucifer went back to Hell specifically to stop this from happening. Has something gone wrong down there? Regardless, someone is still dead. She snaps the file closed. There’s still a murder to solve.

* * *

The scene itself doesn’t offer much insight. The alley is narrow and secluded, but relatively clean, with the exception of the blood pool stretching across the pavement. It’s messy. Smears and drag marks leave the main body of blood, of which a majority has run into a nearby drain. Bloody shoeprints lead away from the pool before stopping where a vehicle must have been parked. Knocked over garbage bins rest nearby. This doesn’t look like it was done by demons; it was not an efficient kill like Holla Bae.

Ella crouches next to the blood pool, notebook in hand. Her pen flies across the page. "This is giving me weird flashbacks. Mysterious blood pool, shoeprints walking away from the scene,” Ella shakes her head. “Just like our last case before Lucifer ditched us,” she grumbles.

A spark of indignation rises in Chloe, but Ella continues on.

“From what I can tell, it looks like our vic was chased down the alley and tripped after stepping in there," Ella points to a nearby pothole with her pen, "and when the attacker caught up, our vic was stabbed, and they struggled. Based on the amount of blood loss, our vic should be dead, but it’s hard to tell with the blood runoff. These shoeprints are from high heels, so we’re probably looking for a lady killer. She’d have to be pretty strong to haul off a dead body. And in heels too, damn.” Ella shakes her head in admiration.

"Do we have any way to ID our vic? Security cameras? Fingerprints?" Chloe takes another glance around the alley, but there are no cameras in sight.

Ella shakes her head. "Nada, unless you count the blood spatter. I can run our vic’s DNA through the database. It’s unlikely we’ll get a hit, but it’s worth a shot.”

“So for now, all we can do is comb through local missing persons reports. Great." There goes the rest of her day.

Ella shrugs. “Pretty much. Hopefully this one turns up alive and stays that way.”

Chloe nods, but a pit of worry has already formed in her stomach. She just hopes this demon won’t be as much trouble as the last.

* * *

Maze is sitting at Chloe's desk when she gets back from the scene, feet resting on a stack of files. At the sight of her, relief and annoyance flood through Chloe in turn.

“Hey, did you get my text?” she asks.

“Yeah, I saw it this morning. I was out tracking down my latest.” Maze waves a cheque in front of her face. “Speaking of, he was pretty messed up after seeing you. Did he actually shoot you?

Chloe hesitates for a moment too long.

“He did shoot you.” Maze stands up, and Chloe grabs her by the arm before she gets any… ideas. 

“Maze, no.”

“What? Turnabout’s fair play, right?”

_ “Maze.” _

“Fine. Later." Maze slumps in the chair, Chloe’s chair, and actually pouts. It’s so similar to Trixie that Chloe has to stifle a smile. "What’s up?”

“I...” Chloe glances around the precinct. No one’s looking their way, but it still feels… weird. “This isn’t the best place to talk about, um, celestial stuff.” She winces as the words leave her mouth. ”Can you meet me at my place right after work? I have to pick up Trixie from roller derby at five.”

Maze rolls her eyes, but stands anyway. “Sure.” She leaves with a lazy wave over her shoulder.

Chloe takes her desk chair back. Maze has lowered it to the very bottom, again. She adjusts it back to her ideal settings with a grumble. With a plan in place, Chloe already feels a little bit better. She’s still worried, terrified of the implications of what might have happened to her, but Maze will have answers. Maze will know what’s going on. This is nothing they can’t solve, she’s sure of it.

The rest of the day sees her using what little information she has to sift through the missing persons database. She sorts them into ‘No’ and ‘Maybe’ groups. She sends a by-the-way text to Maze about the blood pool and receives a succinct,  _ well fuck, _ in response. The clock on her computer monitor taunts her as the end of the day approaches.

When the time comes, she quickly gathers her things and drives home faster than she normally would. The dog is still lounging in the shade of her apartment complex when she arrives. The SPCA must have not come by yet. It perks up as she draws near. 

"Did no one come looking for you?" she says, stopping to check the water bowl. It’s getting low, so she grabs it, intent on filling it up again. The dog follows her to the door. When she opens it, the dog tries to slip through, and she blocks it with her leg.

"Nope, you can’t come inside," she says, and slips through the door herself.

The dog stands on the other side of the glass, tail wag stalling to a stop. It seems friendly enough, but it could easily get hit by a car or succumb to the heat of the LA sun. If it's still here tomorrow, she’ll have to call the SPCA again.

After leaving the refilled bowl outside, Chloe flutters around the house while waiting for Maze to arrive. She rearranges throw pillows and scrubs the kitchen counters to keep herself occupied, and tries not to let her nerves get the best of her.

Maybe it's nothing. Maybe she just got a free pass from God and can continue on with her life as if nothing happened. Nothing has made sense since she woke up on that warehouse floor. Or, really, nothing has made sense since learning that the Devil is real. Not completely, at least.

She jerks her head towards the door when it opens and winces as the motion makes her head pound.

"Jumpy much?" Maze says by way of greeting. WIthout knocking. As always. 

Chloe shrugs from where she’s scrubbing the kitchen faucet to a shine. "It's not every day you rise from the dead,” she mutters to the sink.

Maze takes a stool by the counter. "Speak for yourself. Not that I've done it in a while.” Of course Maze heard that. Demon. “That’s weird for you though. So. What happened?” Maze is playing at nonchalance, but her clipped tone of voice gives her away. Chloe's worry steps up a notch.

Chloe searches her pocket and places the bullet on the counter between them. It meets the granite surface with a clack.

Maze picks up the bullet and turns it over in her hands. “Is this from—”

“Yeah. I was chasing him, and I…”  _ Shrieking nerves, can’t move, can’t breathe, choking, suffocating. _ “I was shot in the neck, Maze. There’s no way I survived that, I  _ know _ I didn’t, because I… went somewhere. And somehow I woke up after and I was fine, as if nothing happened, but it did happen because I have the bullet, and he recognized me, Maze! He knew I should be dead!”

Maze rounds the counter and grabs her by the shoulders. Chloe realizes that she’s close to hyperventilating.

“Okay, calm down. You went somewhere? You mean Heaven?” Maze asks.

Chloe shakes her head and stares past Maze's shoulder. That place didn’t seem like Heaven. The heat, the fear, the anguish creeps back up on her anew. “It was dark, hot. There was ash everywhere. I was in some sort of trench. And it was quiet. Really quiet.” Almost deafeningly so. Except when it wasn’t.

Maze lets go of her shoulders and Chloe looks up. She actually looks worried. 

“Chloe, that sounds like Hell.”

The air leaves her lungs in a rush. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew, but having it confirmed, by a demon no less, makes it all too real.

“Why would I go to Hell?” she asks, and her voice comes out much weaker than she means it to. Is this because she fell in love with the Devil? Is God really so much of a bastard that he would condemn her to an eternity of torture because she loved his fallen son? The thought is like a knife to the gut.

Maze chews on her lip. “Hell is all about guilt. If you feel like you deserve it, that’s where you end up.”

Trusting Kinley. Betraying Lucifer. The knife twists.

“So you died, and went to Hell—which we are fixing, by the way. I don’t ever want to see you again after you kick it—but you came back, and you were healed? That doesn’t happen. People don’t just heal from mortal wounds, not without some sort of divine intervention.” Maze gets a strange look on her face. “Huh. Maybe this is because of your miracle thing.”

That gives Chloe pause. “My what?”

Maze stills. “Lucifer didn’t tell you?” she says slowly. Something must show on Chloe’s face, because Maze mutters a  _ shit _ under her breath.

"Tell me what?” Chloe asks, anxiety alighting anew.

“Fuck, nevermind. Forget I said anything.”

“Maze. Tell me  _ what?” _

Maze blows out a breath and looks away. "God… made you. For Lucifer.”

Chloe’s mind stutters to a halt. After everything that’s happened to her in the last twenty-four hours, this is too much. It sounds like a bad joke, but the look on Maze’s face is serious in a way that it never is. 

No. She refuses to believe this.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she chokes out.

"I mean the bastard put you here on purpose. You weren't supposed to exist. I didn’t believe it either until I saw an old photo of Amenadiel with your mom.”

Oh.

Maze is still talking, but Chloe can't hear any of it. After Perry’s trial, her mom mentioned that she ran into “Maze’s lovely boyfriend,” outside of the complex, and swore up and down that she had met him before. Memories from her childhood rise to the surface. Her middle name, Jane—gift from God—that her dad always spoke about with a twinkle in his eye. Sneaking down the stairs at night to hear her mom telling her friends that she never thought she could have kids until her miracle child came along.

She tries to laugh, but it comes out sounding strangled. "But I'm not—I'm just a cop. What do you mean I was  _ made _ for him?" Pain flares behind her eyes. It can't be true. It can’t. "Are you trying to say that I’m some—some consolation prize for the Devil?"

Maze still won’t meet her eyes. Why won't Maze just look at her? The world feels too real and far away all at once. It’s too much. Her breaths are coming fast and ragged, and she presses her hands to her eyes in a fruitless effort to push back the tears. 

"How long did he know?" she asks.

"A couple of years."

Professor Carlisle. Her poisoning. Lucifer, barging into her house at ten at night looking like she’d ripped his heart out. Lucifer, running off to Vegas while she recovered in the hospital.

"Why didn’t he tell me?” she whispers.

The clack and roll of Maze fiddling with the bullet on the counter fills the quiet of the apartment. “What was he supposed to say? ‘Congratulations, you were made for me’?"

Something in Chloe snaps. White-hot rage burns through her and she gets right up in the demon’s face.

"I wasn't made for anyone," she snarls. She pushes past Maze and storms out of the apartment, not bothering to close the door behind her. She jumps in her car and holds the steering wheel with a death grip. This is a joke. Or a misunderstanding. After all this time reconciling with Maze, she just had to get one last jab in. Well, it isn't funny. Chloe turns the keys in the ignition and tears away.

* * *

Lucifer follows the stench of Hell to the very same beach that he and Mazikeen landed on ten years ago. He closes his eyes and takes a bittersweet moment to enjoy the breeze on his skin. It’s cool by Hell’s hot, stagnant standards. He never thought he’d be here again, especially not so soon. He’s missed it here, dearly, and being back on Earth has old memories resurfacing anew. He would love nothing more than to live here once again, to enjoy life with the detective and everyone he’s come to care for here on Earth. His father had other plans though, and life has continued on without him as it always has, as it always will. The world will reinvent itself once more in ways that he will only catch glimpses of through the Hell loops of its former denizens.

The moment passes, and he opens his eyes. There is still a rogue demon to track down, and its choice of LA gives him all the more reason to finish this quickly. He doesn’t have time for games, not anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wanted to publish this yesterday but it just kept getting longer 😭 editing this was agonizing but i think it was worth it


	3. The Lost and Found Out

The light turns green and Chloe tears away from the stop line. The speedometer climbs well above the speed limit. She pays it no mind. She doesn’t know where she’s going, but she needs to get away. Away from Maze, away from the sick reality of her life.  Her rage boils up in a churning wealth of magma that threatens to rip her apart. A headache pounds at her temples and only serves to make her angrier. 

Since she found out the truth about angels and demons, she thought divinity was just something that stumbled into her life and refused to leave her alone. She wondered why the Devil himself had taken a liking to her of all people, but now she knows.

Now she knows.

A miracle. That’s the word Maze had used. She’s a miracle, handcrafted by God himself, and created just for Lucifer. Suddenly, things make a lot more sense. It must be why Lucifer’s desire mojo never worked on her. It must be why she makes the Devil bleed. If her existence was planned, what other parts of her life were intentional? How deep does God’s influence run in her life?

Did her father have to die, too? 

A harsh laugh builds in her throat and pushes past her lips. She feels small and powerless and so very very alone, but the voice just laughs and laughs and laughs. The road blurs in front of her; she can’t drive like this. She turns onto a side street and pulls over. Her forehead hits the wheel and she squeezes her eyes shut. She’s so angry, she’s shaking with it. This isn’t like her. She takes deep, steadying breaths until the boiling pit of rage in her chest begins to cool.

Maze doesn’t deserve this anger. She only told the truth when no one else would, and Chloe had blown up at her for it. She should… she should turn back and apologize.

The neighbourhood she finds herself in is completely unfamiliar, and she barely remembers how she got here, so she sets up her phone’s GPS to guide her home. The dog is gone when she gets back, the bowl still full of water. Was it still there when she left? She picks up the water bowl and heads inside. 

Trixie’s shoes are by the door when she walks in, and she curses under her breath. She forgot to pick up her daughter. Not only had Maze remembered her words, but even with the way Chloe had blown up at her, she still picked up her kid in case Chloe forgot. Guilt roils in her gut. Thank God for Maze. 

Not God. Somebody.

Maze and Trixie sit at the dining table, huddled over a sheet of paper and a box of crayons. Two abandoned bowls rest nearby. The room smells like mac and cheese. 

“Hey,” Chloe calls out. Trixie’s eyes bounce over to her before skittering away. “Honey, can you do your homework for a bit?”

Trixie’s eyes bounce between the two of them, a glare half-formed on her face. She looks reluctant to leave her friend alone. Maze nods at her, and Trixie sighs but grabs her backpack anyway, taking her schoolwork to her bedroom. Chloe doesn’t miss the worried glance her daughter gives them as she closes her bedroom door. Chloe will have to have a talk with her about this afterwards. For now though, she focuses on Maze.

They step into the living room. Maze leans against the wall by the fireplace. Her posture is closed in and defensive.

“Thank you for picking up Trixie. I owe you one,” Chloe starts.

Maze doesn’t look at her. “No problem.”

“Do I want to know how you got her home?”

“Nope.”

Chloe thinks of the motorcycle that Maze has taken to riding lately and winces. She’s probably right. “I’m sorry, Maze. I overreacted earlier. I shouldn't have blown up at you."

Maze gives a jerky nod. “‘S fine.”

“No, it’s not. You were just trying to tell me the truth, and I got angry and took it out on you. You didn’t deserve that.”

Mazes face flickers with an expression that Chloe doesn’t quite catch, but the guarded look in her eyes falls away. “I called Linda after you left. She… helped. You okay now?" Maze asks.

_ Miracle. _

"I—yeah. I'll just need some time to process." Chloe tugs on a loose thread on her sleeve.

"Well, don't take as long as last time," Maze grumbles, but there is a teasing edge to her tone. 

Chloe smiles. “I’ll try not to.”

“And don’t worry about the demon. I’ll take care of it. I’ve already cleared my schedule. Nobody messes with this city but me.”

Chloe sees Maze out the door. When she turns around, Trixie is there with her hands on her hips and a glare on her face. It’s the first time Chloe’s seen her since she was shot. If she was any other person, she would have never seen her baby again. Trixie would have grown up just like her, a child with a parent lost to the police force.

“Why didn’t you pick me up?” Trixie asks, pulling Chloe from her thoughts.

She winces. “I forgot. I’m really sorry, honey.”

Trixie chews on her lip, a bad habit that she’s had since she was a toddler. “What happened with you and Maze?” she asks.

Chloe pulls Trixie over to the couch. “Maze... told me something that made me upset. It wasn’t her fault, but I got mad at her anyway.”

“So you shot the messenger?”

“I guess you could say that.” Chloe huffs a laugh. “Listen, sometimes… we do things that aren’t right. And when we’re wrong — when we know we’re wrong — we need to apologize. It’s not easy, but it’s the right thing to do.”

She waits with bated breath as Trixie digests the information. She can only hope that she’s doing the right thing by explaining this to her daughter.

Trixie nods in understanding and looks back up at her. “So, if I took an extra slice of cake when you weren’t looking, I should apologize for that too?” she asks.

“You did what?”

“Nothing!”

Trixie scampers off to brush her teeth and Chloe breathes a sigh of relief. That had gone better than expected. 

Trixie settles herself into bed with the insistence that storytime is for kids and she’s not a kid anymore. Chloe doesn’t press the issue, not tonight. She would really like some cuddle time with her monkey, but she doesn’t want to worry her. Her kid is getting too perceptive, and she’d like her to keep her innocence for just a little longer. The world is a scary place, and she doesn’t ever want it to break Trixie down.

In her own bedroom, Chloe leans against the closed door and squeezes her eyes shut. Laughter bubbles up again, but what comes out is a choked sob.

_ Miracle. _

A single word with implications that she cannot hope to grasp. She is a fabricated other half, a second Eve. For all of her existence being part of a grand plan, she feels very, very small.

* * *

The hot rock burns her feet as the ravine bends and weaves in front of her. There is no escaping the heat, the ashen air, the thing following behind her. Her pounding heart is loud in her ears, too loud in the silence that gives her away. The chittering of the beast grows closer and she prays—no, hopes—that it won't catch up to her. God won't help her, not here.

A loose piece of shale slips out from underfoot and sends her sprawling. Sharp pain shoots up her ankle as the rocky ground bites into her palms. She scrambles to get up and limps along as fast as she can. The pain in her ankle screeches in protest with every step.

A low rumble vibrates through the ravine and shakes her to the bone. Bile crawls up her throat. It's too late.

* * *

It’s 3am, and Chloe is once more on the living room floor, staring into the fire.  She slept with the lights on last night; the darkness feeling both too familiar and suffocating at the same time. Evidently, the first dream she had wasn’t just a one-off. This one was worse than the last, and she’s feeling jittery and on edge even an hour after. This has to have something to do with her brush with death. That brief moment changed something.

She needs to understand what this all means. Maze probably knows more, but Chloe didn’t give her a chance to explain before she stormed out of her own apartment. Now that they know there’s a demon on the loose, there’s no time for them to discuss what a miracle even  _ is.  _ Maybe there’s something in Lucifer’s library. If he’s known for years now that she’s his— that she’s a miracle, he must have looked into it himself. She’ll ask Dan to take Trixie for the night, and she can stop by Lux after work and start her search.

In the morning, the real morning with sunshine and reasonable hours like seven am, she drags herself to the bathroom, bleary eyed and feeling even less rested than the night before. The reflection staring back at her looks exhausted. Worn down by too many revelations in too few days. She doesn’t feel very miraculous.

When she exits the bathroom, Trixie greets her with an all too cheery smile that she suspects is fake. Her monkey shouldn’t have to fake happiness to try to cheer her up, but here they are. Chloe gets dressed and makes them both breakfast as Trixie chats about her day yesterday. After breakfast, Chloe shuttles Trixie off to the bus and drives to the station.

Work is another day of sifting through missing persons reports. With the Holla Bae case, it was his own footprints leading away from the blood pool, not his attacker’s. If this really is a demon like the others, the vic was most likely the one wearing the heels. It’s not a lot to go on, but it’s a start. She gets the shoes’ style and brand from Ella and spends the day combing through the reports on missing women. Her ‘No’ and ‘Maybe’ piles climb higher with no new leads in sight.

After work, she heads straight for Lux. Apprehension builds in her gut as the elevator climbs up the floors to the penthouse. She hasn’t been here since she cleaned up the mess that the demons left in their wake. She knows what awaits her; she’s been avoiding this place for a reason. Being here brings back too many memories that she’s successfully ignored for months now. 

The doors glide open, and even though she’s expecting it, the sight of the penthouse furniture draped in sheets still makes her heart climb into her throat. Dust clings to the exposed surface of the bar. There is a stillness to the air that was never present before. It’s wrong in so many ways. The open floorplan feels vacant in a way that it never did when Lucifer was still here.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. 

Chloe swallows down her grief. She came here for a reason, not to get caught up in the past. She needs to figure out what a miracle is in biblical terms, find any past examples, and get an idea of what her nightly dreams could mean. They only started after she was shot, and there was no way that was a coincidence.

She rips the sheets off the furniture, hating how much they remind her of Vegas and missed opportunities and the fact that Lucifer is never coming back. She turns her back on the penthouse entirely and scours the library for any books that look like they might be useful. 

The shelves are packed with books written in English, German, French, Greek, and many other languages that she can’t hope to identify. Some books look like they belong in a museum, and she’s reluctant to touch them in case they crumble in her hands. William Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde sit among the shelves, but none of those help her. She’s looking for reference material. A few books look promising, so she pulls them off the shelves, careful to note where she got them for later reshelving. She settles at the desk with her stack of books, still pointedly facing away from the rest of the penthouse, and begins to read.

She scours page after page, book after book, but nothing brings her closer to any answers. There’s nothing here. None of the books contain exactly what she’s looking for. She was so sure that Lucifer would have done some sort of research on this, but maybe… maybe it wasn’t that important to him. After all, he pulled away from her when he found out.

When she almost passes out on the desk, she checks her phone for the time and winces at the display. It’s too late for it to be worth driving home for the night, and she has a spare set of clothes in her car, but… does she really want to sleep here? Alone? She eyes the bedroom and the big, empty penthouse behind her. She can do this. It’s just for the night.

The bed is as soft as she remembers. She curls up under the blankets and lets the steady throb of the club’s bass lull her to sleep.

* * *

Blood runs down her fingertips and splashes against the stone ground. She limps along the ravine’s path while using the walls for balance. 

A dizzy spell hits and she almost topples over. Her back slides down the stone wall until she’s sitting slouched against it. The long gouges on her arm burn, and her fingers on that hand won’t move anymore, but there is nothing she can do about that now. She hasn’t even come across a stream that she could use to wash off the wounds. There truly is nothing here but monsters.

She’s tired. Of the constant fear, of the running, of the beasts with too many eyes and too many limbs that move in ways that don’t make sense. She’ll rest here for a bit. It’s not safe here, but nowhere is safe. She can’t run anyway.

* * *

Chloe wakes with the taste of ash on her tongue. SHe cracks open her eyelids to see herself reflected back at her on the ceiling. This is Lucifer’s penthouse. Right. She slides out of the silk sheets and shivers. Lately, she only ever feels warm in her dreams. She jumps in the shower to try and warm up, and ignores how much Lucifer’s body wash smells like him. 

When she arrives at the station, Dan eyes the extra large coffee cup she holds to her chest like a lifeline. She gives him a tired smile in response and settles down at her desk. She gets to work sifting through missing persons once more. Her second cup of coffee is half empty when her sleep deprived brain snags on one of the files. 

Elizabeth Harrison, 32, reported missing this morning. Her landlord found the door open and the place trashed, and reported her missing after she couldn’t get in contact with her.

Oh. That sounds promising. 

She finds Elizabeth’s Wobble profile and scrolls through her photos. In a company photo, Elizabeth poses with a group of her colleagues. She’s wearing the same heels that Ella identified from the scene. This has to be her vic. That also means this is their demon. She sends Maze a link to Elizabeth’s profile, and then contacts Missing Persons for the woman’s address.

She pokes her head into the lab. “Ella, I think I found our vic. You want to come along?”

Ella looks up from her microscope. “No way, really? Just give me a sec to grab my stuff.”

When they arrive at the scene, the unis are already there. One of them, Officer Cacuzza, spots Chloe and waves her over.

“Detective Decker, the landlord is over here.”

Chloe nods. “I’ll catch up to you, Ella,” she says, and follows Cacuzza down the hall, where a shaken woman stands away from the scene. The woman wrings her hands together and keeps her gaze away from the Elizabeth’s door. Chloe flips through her notes for the woman’s name.

“Hi, Mrs. Davis, I’m Detective Decker. What can you tell me about Ms. Harrison?” she asks.

Mrs. Davis lets out a shaky breath. “She was a good tenant. Quiet. Always paid the rent on time. It didn’t seem like she had a lot of friends.” The woman sniffles. “Do you think she’s… dead?”

Chloe’s grip on her pen tightens. “I’m not at liberty to say right now. Are you aware of any enemies she might have had, or conflicts she’s been in recently?”

The woman’s expression flickers. “Some of my tenants let me know that there’s been a man loitering around the complex recently. A tall, angry looking fellow.”

Chloe writes that down. This could be their guy. “Do you have any security camera footage we can go through?”

Mrs. Davis nods. “We keep the tapes in the basement. You can look through whatever you need.”

Chloe thanks her and steps onto the scene. The apartment is a mess. Books, drawers, and couch cushions litter the floor. A trail of blood runs from the entrance into the apartment proper, marking a clear path to a nearby room. Ella crouches by the blood trail, camera in hand. She looks up when Chloe enters and waves her over. 

“There’s something you need to see,” Ela says.

Chloe steps over the mess on the floor. Ella leads her along the blood trail to where it ends in a bathroom. It’s in a similar state to the rest of the apartment. Cabinets and drawers lie open, their contents dropped to the floor. Bandage wrappers and bloodied gauze litter the counter. A pile of bloodstained clothes lie in a heap by the far wall.

“Check this out.” Ella lifts a blouse up from the pile. A large blood stain blooms outward from several holes in the front of the shirt. “This really is our vic. I still don’t get how she survived this,” Ella says.

“Maybe it was something like what happened at the Mayan.” Chloe prods. Keeping this investigation on track is going to be difficult with the complication of the body getting up and walking away on its own. 

Ella shakes her head. “I read the case file on that one. Those bodies were moved post-mortem. They had been dead for hours, and Holla Bae and Kinley were dead for days. I still don’t know how they staged that pic outside the studio, by the way. It was good work.” Ella lifts up the blouse again and shakes her head. “This, though. This doesn’t make any sense. And why would she tear up her own apartment like this?”

Chloe shrugs. “Maybe she lost something, misplaced an emergency stash. She was clearly in trouble.”

“I guess. Where were you going, girl?” Ella asks the blouse.

That’s what Chloe needs to figure out.

* * *

Lucifer is growing concerned.

Not antsy, not anxious, because the Devil doesn’t do that. No, he is concerned, and rightly so, because the more he narrows down the location of Hell’s escapee, the closer it brings him to the detective’s apartment. He doesn’t know how much Dromos overheard at the Mayan, doesn’t know what he passed on to the other demons before Lucifer put an end to his pathetic existence, but if this demon is targeting her to get to him…

The tension in his limbs grows as he follows the trail to the detective’s apartment complex, and then to her garden in the back. If it’s already in there with her, if it  _ hurt _ her—

He comes to a stop at the garden gate. A dog lies by the back door. No, not a dog. It’s a hellhound. The hound raises its head and stares him down, eyes igniting and burning red with hellfire. 

Lucifer glares back. “What are you doing here, Cerberus?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> casefic is hard. i'm not completely satisfied with this chapter but i don't want to keep sitting on it. 5a approaches!


	4. Hold Our Hollow-Hearted Ground

This isn’t just bad. Oh no, this is so much worse than he thought. Cerberus only listens to one person, and wherever she is, her hound is sure to follow. 

The lights are on in the apartment. Lucifer pushes past Cerberus to get to the door—the hound knows better than to attack him by now—and raps frantically on the glass door. It has to be a trap: lure the Devil to where he’s vulnerable and then take him out, but he can’t risk the possibility that the detective is in danger. He won’t have her blood in his hands, not after he gave up everything to keep her safe.

The door swings open, but no one is there.

“Lucifer!”

He looks down and braces for impact right before Beatrice tackles him. She attempts to squeeze the life out of him, but her small size leaves her altogether unsuccessful. She'd have more luck crushing a rock in her hands, really. He's not sure why she tries.

“Urchin,” he says. “Are you alright? Is your mother alright? Has anyone stopped by?”

She shakes her head, and he allows himself to relax a bit. If her offspring is alright, then surely the detective must be okay. 

He stares down into the big sad eyes that stare back up at him. He shifts in discomfort. She usually lets go by now. He reaches for her arms to pry her off, but she only holds on tighter, so he lets her be. Humans, especially their offspring, can be so fragile and he doesn't want to hurt her. At a loss of what else to do, he pats her on the head and she grumbles in protest.

"Beatrice, darling, are you sure you’re alright? I thought you were over the hugging."

She buries her face in his side. "Mom said you weren't coming back.” Her voice comes out muffled against his suit jacket.

A sad smile tugs at his lips. "I'm here now, aren't I?"

He feels her smile into his side, and he can't even bring himself to be mad at the slobber she's undoubtedly gotten on him.

* * *

“Lucifer!”

Chloe rushes down the stairs before she registers what she’s doing. She turns the corner and there he is, at her back door, in the same suit that he wore when he left. 

“Lucifer,” she breathes. He’s… he’s here. He’s actually here. Her emotions twist into knots. She wants to run to him. The voice in her head whispering  _ miracle _ holds her back.

He looks up from her daughter’s messy ponytail. “Detective…” He stares at her like she’s a port in a storm.

“What happened? We got-” Chloe glances down to where Trixie has Lucifer wrapped in a hug, “we got another case like the last one you were on.”

His expression closes off. She immediately misses its warmth. 

“Something escaped from Hell, and I tracked it here. I needed to make sure you were safe.”

“It’s… here?”

“Indeed. The hound in the back.”

“What hound—” She peeks through the blinds. The shaggy black dog from a couple days ago stands at the door. 

“I don’t know why it’s here, but it must be on orders. They only listen to their masters; not even I can command them.”

The dog’s eyes reflect the red light of the setting sun—No. Its eyes are actually glowing red.  _ Hell _ hound. Of course. Its black fur shifts through brown, red, and orange down its back, ending in a golden tail, as if the dog itself has been lit aflame.

First her shooting and her subsequent revival, then the nightmares of Hell itself, and now a hellhound is stalking her, while her daughter is here, no less. She glances down to Trixie, who still has Lucifer wrapped up in a hug. “Let's… talk about this later.”

Trixie turns her head to look at her and pouts from where she’s listening in on their conversation.

As if reminded of her presence, Lucifer looks down. "You’ll have to let go of me eventually, urchin."

For a moment, it seems like Trixie won’t let go, but she gives him a final squeeze and steps back. Lucifer dusts himself off with a put-upon grimace. 

“Can I borrow your phone?” he asks. “I need to contact Maze.”

Chloe nods and hands it over. The phone rings twice before it connects.

“Mazikeen.”

It’s all he gets out before angry shouts come through the speaker. Lucifer winces and holds the phone away from his ear. Trixie giggles. He replies in a deep, guttural language that Chloe can’t quite place. The reply is much quieter this time, but just as angry. He begins to speak once more but stops short and frowns at the phone.

“She hung up on me,” he says. “Demons and their manners.” He turns to her. “Maze will be here in a few hours.” He eyes the hellhould through the glass door once more. 

“Would you like something to eat?” she asks weakly.

He sighs and looks at her with something like sadness in his eyes. “You know I can’t stay, detective.”

Right. He only returned because of the demon, and he’ll have to leave again once it’s dealt with. She had a feeling that was the case. Still.

“Please? We haven’t eaten dinner yet, and I’ll feel rude if we eat in front of you.”

“If you insist,” he says. Then, as if it was never gone, a wide grin spreads across his face. “I know this lovely Ethiopian restaurant that owes me a favour, how does that sound?”

Food is ordered and Trixie sets the table with an excitement that she never has for chores. The restaurant sends over a veritable feast of food, delivered by the owner who chats with Lucifer at the door. They say their goodbyes, and Lucifer carries the food to the dining table where they lay out the takeout containers.

The food is delicious. Trixie catches Lucifer up on all the latest gossip at her school and he listens attentively, occasionally adding his own comments and quips. It’s nice. It almost feels like things are back to normal. She’s so glad that he’s back. 

_ Made for him, _ her mind whispers, and the thought twists up her insides. 

When Trixie reluctantly goes to bed, they migrate to the couch. They sit side by side, but there’s a space between them now. She’s not sure who created it.

“The case I mentioned: the blood pool. I gave the details to Maze. She’s tracking down the demon now,"Chloe says.

Lucifer nods. “She mentioned that.”

“Are we in danger?” she asks.

“Not while I’m here.”

She hums in acknowledgement but doesn’t reply.

Without the buffer of Trixie, she doesn’t know what to say. It’s strange being around him now, knowing she’s… made for him. It calls into question everything she's ever felt. She can’t help the draw she feels to him, but do her feelings count if she was made to love him? How do you act around the person you were made for when they know you only exist for them? 

"A lot on your mind, detective?"

She looks up to find Lucifer watching her with soft eyes. She wants to go back to before she knew the truth of her existence. She doesn't want to worry him, especially when he'll have to go back to Hell so soon, but if her brush with death is related, then he needs to know.

"The blood pool isn't the only thing that happened. A couple of days ago, I was chasing down a suspect, and he shot me. It was really bad, Lucifer. I died, and I…" she clutches at the fabric of her jeans. 

“You what?” He looks over her with frantic eyes, searching for a wound that no longer exists.

"I went to Hell.” It’s still so hard to say, to think. “But then I was back, and and we as if nothing happened.”

A look of agony distorts his face. “That’s… preposterous,” he says.

She waits, silently begging him to come clean and tell her the truth, that she's a miracle. She watches as he flounders, searching for what to say. His expression flickers to one of pain but not surprise. Her stomach drops at the sight, a confirmation of a truth that she already knew.

"Where were you hurt?" is all he asks, and she deflates. Now that she knows to look for it, she can see the hesitation in his eyes. He knows, and he's not going to tell her.

She brings a hand up to her neck. “Here.”

He runs a thumb along the column of her throat and she fights the urge to lean into his touch. His eyes blaze red.

"I'll be okay," she says, and he pulls his hand away. She misses his touch immediately, and hates herself a little bit for it. She doesn’t mention the nightmares, doesn’t want to think of what they could mean. Two can play his game of truthful deception.

“I won’t let you go back there. I’ll fly you to the Silver City myself if I have to. Dad be damned." 

A weight lifts from her that she didn’t know she was carrying. She’ll never have to go back to Hell, not with the Devil on her side. She glances once again to the back door where the dog—the hellhound—watches her from outside. Its eyes glow red between the slats of the blinds. She just hopes that this can be solved quickly.

* * *

The detective is snoring none too gently on his shoulder. Lucifer never thought he would be here again. For her, it may have been months since he left, but for him, it’s been decades. He is so incredibly happy to see her again, but there is a tiredness to her that worries him. He’s glad she’s getting this small amount of rest.

Mazikeen walks through the front door and leans against it with crossed arms. It’s time for him to go. He noses along Chloe’s temple, heart full of all the things he wants to say but doesn't have time for. With a lingering kiss to her cheek, he extracts himself from her embrace, careful not to wake her. 

He steps away from the living room, and Maze kicks him in the chest. With the detective nearby, it knocks the breath out of him and he wheezes.

“Bloody hell, watch the Armani! You’ve no idea what it takes to keep this suit ash-free in Hell.”

“That’s for leaving without saying anything,” she hisses.

“At least try not to wake the detective!”

“She sleeps like the dead. She never said anything about me using my vibrators when we lived together. Now. Why did you call me?”

“Cerberus is here.”

Maze stills. “What?”

He nods towards the back door. 

She peeks through the blinds and curses in Lilim at the sight of the hound. “If Cerberus is on Earth then that means—”

“That Lilith is here, yes.” he says.

“She’s been AWOL for ages. What the hell does she want with Chloe?”

“Not a clue. Something else is going on here, and I need you to keep the detective safe while I look for our runaway hellion.”

Maze scoffs. “Watch her yourself. Need I remind you that  _ I’m _ the bounty hunter here?”

Lucifer can't help but look back to the living room where the detective rests on the couch. “I can’t just waltz back into her life after all this time. It will only hurt her more when I leave again.”

“Hurt  _ her?” _ Maze snorts.

Lucifer chooses to ignore that. “You know it’s best if I go after Lilith.”

Maze works her jaw. Her disagreement is written clearly across her face. “Fine, a deal then,” she says. “This blood pool case. If we solve it before you catch up to that bitch, we switch and you take over babysitting duty.”

“Deal.” He won’t be longer than a few days.With that settled, he makes for the door. “Right, well. If that’s all.”

“She’s gonna be pissed when she wakes up and you’re gone,” Maze says.

Lucifer falters woth his hand on the door handle. He tamps down the urge to reach out to the detective once more. He can’t afford to get too comfortable here. If he does, he’s not sure he’ll have the willpower to leave again. 

“It can’t be helped,” he says, his words cutting it dangerously close to a lie. 

“Whatever, keep telling yourself that. Bye.” Maze rolls her eyes, a habit she no doubt picked up from the detective.

He takes his leave through the back door.  If Cerberus is at the detective’s home, then Lilith can’t be far. Lilith has always been smarter than her children, with a vindictive streak a mile wide. He can’t imagine her going to these lengths for Dromos of all demons, but she’s been in hiding for eons. Maybe she was just waiting for the perfect time to strike. A weak spot like the detective is as good as any.

Keeping his wings above the reach of the blasted hound, he takes to the sky.

* * *

Chloe wakes up disoriented, but more well rested than she’s felt in days. She didn’t even dream. A headache throbs at her temples, but it's nothing that can’t be solved with some ibuprofen. She cracks open an eyelid. She's on the couch. Why is she on the couch? Last night she got off work, picked up Trixie, and then Lucifer-

_ Lucifer. _

She sits bolt upright and looks around for him. She can’t see him anywhere, and her chest grows tight.

"Lucifer?"

The anxiety that sprouted when she first walked in on a sheet covered penthouse rears its ugly head. He isn't here. He left again. He didn’t even say goodbye. She catches herself wringing her hands together and plants them on her knees. She takes a deep breath, and then another. It's okay. At least she got to see him again.

It's really not okay, but she still has work to focus on and her daughter to take care of. She can't get hung up on Lucifer again. She checks the time on her phone, which sits at twenty percent battery, and slides off the couch.

A scent wafts through the room. Something is burning. She peers warily into the kitchen to find Maze making an attempt at breakfast. It doesn’t smell like she’s gotten any better at cooking since they lived together. Maybe demons just like their food charred.

“Where’s Lucifer?” she asks. 

Maze looks up from the stove. “He left. Went to hunt down the runaway Hell-dweller. It's not safe for you with the hound around, so I'm here on babysitting duty.” Maze grins at her.

Oh no. 

“You can’t come to work with me, Maze.”

Maze spins the spatula in her hand with alarming ease. “Oh, I wouldn’t miss this for the world, Decker.”

Chloe leans against the counter. “So Lucifer's hunting down this demon?” she asks.

“Not a demon. Lilith.”

Lilith. The name sounds familiar. 

“Adam’s first wife. And my mother.” Maze stabs at a piece of bacon with the spatula.

“Your mother? I didn’t know demons had those.”

Maze looks up from the pan. “We all do.”

“Oh.”

Trixie walks out of her room with a yawn and stops short at the sight of Maze. “Maze!” She turns a circle, looking around the apartment. “Where’s Lucifer?”

“He had something he had to do,” Maze says.

Trixie deflates. “And he didn’t say goodbye?”

Chloe leads her daughter to the breakfast bar. “C’mon, monkey, let’s eat. Maybe we’ll see him later.” Chloe pulls out a box of cereal and two bowls for her and Trixie, too familiar with Maze’s cooking to try it.

Maze loads up her plate with a mountain of bacon that’s just on the wrong side of crispy.

"You need something healthy, Maze. Vegetables are important,” Trixie says.

"I'm a demon, I don't need it."

"Maaaaze!"

"Fine. What you got?"

Trixie slides over the container of sliced veggies. Maze grabs a carrot and takes a loud bite that echoes through the apartment. Chloe tries not to look annoyed. Tries. 

"This… hound. Couldn’t Lucifer send it away, like he did at the Mayan?" Chloe asks.

Maze just shakes her head. "No, hellhounds only listen to their masters, and this one in particular puts up a hell of a fight."

Chloe's eyes flick over to Trixie, who watches them intently. "Maybe we should talk about this some other time."

"Nah, the kid knows." Maze snaps off a chunk of her carrot with a crack.

Chloe blinks. "Since when?"

"It's been what," Maze and Trixie eye each other, "three years now?"

Trixie nods sagely. "Halloween when I was eight."

"You're known longer than I have?" Chloe asks.

"Yeah?"

"About Lucifer too?"

Trixie gives her a look that just says  _ duh. _ "He said he was the Devil when I met him, and he made Jessica scream in the hall. She wouldn't look at me for weeks." She grins. "It was awesome."

They finish up with breakfast and Maze dumps their dishes in the sink without washing them. Chloe rolls her eyes but leaves them for now. It’s better than the trash can.

In the bathroom, Chloe glances at the mirror while readying her toothbrush.

_ Wrong _ . 

The bridge of her nose, the jut of her chin, the curve of her cheekbone: it’s all wrong. Her reflection hasn’t changed, but she can’t see herself in her own features. She feels no ownership of the face staring back at her. 

“Decker, you ready?” Maze calls, and the world snaps back into place. It's just her, Chloe Decker, staring at herself in the mirror. With rumpled clothes, hair a mess, and circles under her eyes to rival a racoon. 

“Just a sec,” she calls back, and turns off the tap. She grabs the edge of the sink and leans against the counter, breathing heavily. What’s happening to her?


	5. And the Flames Grow Higher

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for discussions of domestic violence in this chapter
> 
> shoutout to azure_iolite and wollfgang for helping me out and listening to my confused ramblings while i put this chapter together

Chloe calls Trixie in sick from school that day before dropping her off with Linda and Amenadiel. She thanks them profusely while apologizing for the short notice, and she and Maze head off to the station. When they arrive, Maze gives Dan a wide, feral grin and detours over to his desk. Dan hunches over, trying to ignore her. Chloe shakes her head as she passes them by.

The video files from Elizabeth Harrison’s apartment are waiting in her emails. She spends the next hour scrubbing through the footage. The files are grainy, but they show a tall man loitering around the complex on several different days. He leaves whenever Elizabeth’s vehicle pulls out of the parking garage.

Maze drops into the seat beside the desk. “So. Lucifer’s back,” she says.

“Yup.” And he left. Again.

“And the miracle thing?”

Chloe’s mouse hovers over the play button. “Still dealing with it, thanks.”

“Alright, fine.” Maze picks up Elizabeth’s file. “What do you have on this? Fingerprints? Blood? A name? Need me to track anyone down?”

Chloe blows a stray hair out of her eyes. “No, we don’t have much more than what I sent you. All we have is footage of a guy staking out her apartment, but these videos aren’t great. Facial recognition can’t get an ID. Any news on your end?”

Maze pulls a face. “Nah, the demon’s slippery. I haven’t had any luck with my usual channels. Don’t know why Lucifer thinks he can do any better.”

“Guys!” Ella’s voice carries from across the precinct. They look up to where Ella waves at them from her lab. Chloe looks to Maze, who shrugs, and they both walk over.

“DNA came back on the blood pool!” Ella says when they enter, looking out of breath and elated.

Chloe frowns. “We already know who she is, she had no priors.”

“That’s the thing, she was living under a false ID. Her real name is Leila Douglas, and she’s from Florida. In 2013, she got in a domestic dispute with her husband, Jacob Douglas, and the neighbours called the cops. She later filed domestic violence charges against him, but they didn’t stand up in court. Leila disappeared soon after, Jacob lost his job, and a lot of their friends cut ties with him. D’you think he could’ve tracked her down to LA and—?” Ella mimes a stabbing motion.

Chloe examines the mugshot of Jacob Douglas pulled up on Ella’s computer. He certainly has the stature of the man in the video footage. “It’s possible,” she says.

“If he’s in LA, there’s no paper trail. How are we going to find him?” Ella asks.

Maze raises her eyebrows at them from her spot by the door. Chloe smiles back.

“I know a demon.”

~

The man in front of them is stone-faced. A bruise circles his left eye, and another blooms across his jaw.

“We had quite the time tracking you down, Mr. Douglas,” Chloe says.

Maze snorts from the chair to her left. “Wasn’t that hard,” she mutters.

Chloe ignores her. “We know you went to court over domestic violence charges filed by your wife back in 2013.”

“Yes, and I was found innocent," he says. His voice is even and disinterested.

“When was the last time you saw your wife?”

“In court, seven years ago. After that, she emptied out our safe and disappeared.” His jaw clenches.

Chloe taps the file with her pen. “It is strange, you being in LA so soon after we find evidence of her death.”

He shrugs and leans back in his chair. “I felt like taking a vacation.”

“Right—”

Maze cuts her off. “You take a vacation to LA, conveniently only using cash to get here, and pretty soon after, your wife's blood is found decorating an alleyway. That’s a pretty crazy coincidence. So. Was it you?”

The man stares her in the eye. A mocking smile pulls at the corner of his mouth.

“No matter.” Maze stands from her chair and looms over the table. The indifference on Jacob’s face morphs to a look of horror, and he pushes back against his chair. “I’ll see you in Hell either way.”

“She’s not dead! She’s not dead, I swear!”

Maze sits back down. Jacob’s gaze doesn’t leave her. Whatever Maze did, Chloe missed it. She gives Maze a look, but she just stares at their suspect with a feral grin.

“I—” His eyes dart to Chloe before locking back on Maze. “I found out she was in LA. I tracked her here, followed her home from work one night. I stabbed her, but she didn’t die.”

A small well of anger bubbles up. Chloe tamps down on it and waits, and Jacob squirms in the silence.

“She stopped moving after I kicked her in the head. But then she got up, and—and she attacked me. She had this look in her eyes like…”

“Like she was possessed?” Maze grins.

Jacob’s expression cracks, but he nods. “She took my wallet and my keys, and she drove off with my truck.”

“You’re trying to tell me that after being stabbed repeatedly and kicked in the head, she beat you up and stole your truck?” Chloe fights to keep her voice steady. Embers of a long-dead flame threaten to reignite in her chest.

Jacob flinches, apparently realizing the full weight of what he’s said. He scowls at his hands and doesn’t respond. 

“That’s alright. We’ve got everything we need.” Chloe sweeps out of the interrogation room, anger buzzing under her skin. She should be happy that they got their guy, that this seemingly unsolvable case dropped the murderer right in their lap, but something about his confession struck a nerve.

Maze follows hot on her heels. “Alright, let’s get out of here,” she says, and drags Chloe towards the stairs.

Chloe pulls herself from her grasp. “No, Maze. We may have a confession, but I still have to do the paperwork.”

“Can’t you just leave it til tomorrow?"

“Why are you so eager to leave?”

“No reason. Look, I’ll help you with this paperwork stuff, alright? Then can we go?”

Chloe pinches the bridge of her nose. She didn’t think Maze babysitting her would turn into her babysitting Maze. “No, I can handle it on my own, and we’ll leave at the end of the day,” she says.

Maze settles back beside her desk with a grumble and Chloe works through the paperwork for the case. Her anger from the interrogation still sits in her chest, but she ignores it in favour of getting her work done. A uni approaches with a stack of files. Maze glares at him, and he backs off. Chloe rolls her eyes. She’ll have to do it eventually; Maze is just delaying the inevitable.

The end of the day arrives, and Chloe wraps things up. She’s almost done, but she’ll be able to finish the rest tomorrow.

Maze taps away on her phone. “Lucifer says to meet him at the penthouse.”

“How did he…?”

“Charged his phone.”

"Right."

Chloe ducks into the lab to let Ella know that they’re leaving, and they take the cruiser to Lux. 

The elevator doors open to the sight Lucifer leaning against the bar with a drink. He straightens up as they enter. Maze breezes into the penthouse, throwing a, “Told you,” over her shoulder as she walks by him, and his face twitches. She disappears down the stairs that pass through the library.

With Maze gone, silence hangs in the air, and Lucifer takes another sip of his drink as if to distract himself. Chloe fiddles with the bullet necklace that hides under her shirt.

“When I woke up this morning, I thought you left again,” she says.

“Detective…” 

“Don’t just… leave like that, okay?”

He swallows. “I won’t. I promise.”

Maze comes back with a set of knives and points one at Lucifer. “I’m tagging you out. You two lovebirds have fun.”

“What?” Chloe turns to see Maze wave at her from the elevator, and then they’re alone. Chloe stares at the elevator doors long after they close. Maze didn’t say anything about this.

Behind her, Lucifer wanders the penthouse as if looking at it for the first time. Committing it to memory, most likely. She takes a moment to do the same with him. He's more pale with the absence of the sun, dimming the freckles that dot his skin like constellations. His hair has gone curly with the absence of its usual product. A look of longing shines in his eyes as he studies the place that used to be his home.

“It was quite the mess here when I left, wasn’t it?” he says.

“It was.” It feels like both eons ago and no time at all since she was here to pick up the pieces.

He comes to a stop by the bed, still unmade from her stay a couple of nights ago. “I see you’ve been busy whilst I was gone.”

Her face warms. “I’ve been trying to figure out what happened to me, and this is the only celestial library I know of, so…” She shrugs. “I stayed later than I meant to, and ended up crashing here for the night.”

He offers her a soft smile. “You’re welcome here anytime, you know that. It doesn’t seem like this place is getting much use anyway.”

That may be the case, but she can hardly stand being here alone. Even the idea of coming here with Maze, or with friends, feels wrong. All she can feel in this space is his absence.

The reminder of her research sparks an idea. They may be waiting around on news from Maze, but she can still do something. She eyes the desk, still stacked with books from her night here. 

“Well, I’m gonna get back to my research, so…” She trails off, already making her way over.

“Mind if I join you?” he asks.

“Ah, not at all.” 

The desk is too small for the both of them, so she gathers the books and carries them to the couch. Lucifer sifts through the stack. 

“No, these won’t do,” he says. 

He darts around the library, choosing books from the shelves with the surety of someone who knows the entirety of his collection by heart. He carries his chosen stack over to the coffee table, conspicuously taking the topmost one for himself. She glances at it from the corner of her eye, but it’s in another language. 

“Right. Shall we?” He gives her a polite smile, and it cuts in a way she doesn’t think it’s supposed to. He’s keeping himself at a distance and it hurts, but she doesn’t know how to bridge that gap herself. She’s afraid of all the things that might spill out if she tries.

She gives him a stiff nod and pulls a book from the pile. Only the sound of turning pages fills the silence between them.

Chloe fiddles with a page. Bounces her leg. Drums her fingers on her knee. She can’t focus on the book in front of her. Restless energy roils under her skin and keeps her from concentrating. Her thoughts drift back to Leila Douglas.

And she can feel Lucifer’s eyes on her.

“Are you alright, detective?” he asks.

She runs a hand through her hair. “This blood pool case. It just got to me, I guess.”

He closes the book in his hands. “What happened?”

“The woman was murdered by her husband; he confessed. He used to abuse her, and she filed domestic abuse charges but they didn’t stick. She ran away and changed her identity, but he still tracked her down to LA and killed her. She…” Chloe scrubs her hands across her face. “She tried so hard to escape from him, but in the end she couldn’t get away. She just wanted—”

“Freedom.”

She looks up. Lucifer watches her with a mournful look in his eyes.

“Yeah,” she says. “Freedom.”

That’s all Lucifer ever wanted, wasn’t it? He fell for freedom, but all it got him was a kingdom of ash. He understands the helplessness of knowing that no matter how hard you try, you can’t ever win. If Lucifer himself couldn't go against his father's will, then how could she possibly manage it herself? Who does she think she is to try and defy God when no one has succeeded before her?

She’s tired. Tired of the hollow ache in her chest, tired of fighting against this when all it does is hurt her more. She is but a solitary planet circling a blazing star. How can she hope to escape his orbit? If this is all she’ll ever amount to, then why fight it? It’s like Maze said: this is what she was made for.

She darts up to kiss him. In his surprise his jaw goes slack, and she licks into his mouth. She pushes him back until he leans on the back on the couch and she climbs into his lap. Hands on her shoulders push her away and no no no, this isn’t how this is supposed to go.

“Detective, wait. Can we—are you sure you’re alright?” He studies her face with eyes filled with concern and...love. So much love. They really are doomed if he’s this far gone too. She was created with a purpose, and God hardly has a track record of treating Lucifer well. She can’t imagine how this will be used to wreck him. 

They’re both hopeless, aren’t they?

His thumb smooths over her cheek and it’s only then that she realizes she’s crying. She wipes at her face hastily.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, voice full of warmth that she doesn’t deserve.

“I’m…”  _ a miracle. _ The words sit at the tip of her tongue, begging to be spoken, but her throat constricts around them. She shakes her head and buries her face in the crook of his neck. His arms come around her in a warm, solid embrace. She breathes in the scent of him, still tinged by the fires of Hell. It’s a smell that she recognizes from her dreams. The realization sends a new wave of distress through her.

“I feel like I’m going insane,” she whispers.

Everything that’s happened since the shooting boils over at once, and before she knows it, she’s sobbing into his shirt. Nothing in her life has made sense since she died, since she—since she went to Hell. She cries herself to exhaustion while his hand runs slow, soothing circles on her back. Silent tears still running down her cheeks, she succumbs to the exhaustion that she’s carried through the week. 

* * *

She’s walking the edge of a boiling lake of fire when a hot gust of air blows past her.

"Oh? What do we have here?" a sonorous voice calls from above. 

A figure circles overhead, held aloft by gleaming white wings. They're bright, stunning like none she's ever seen. It's been so long since she's known anything but darkness. The figure lands with a burst of wind that almost knocks her over. He's beautiful. Dark, curly hair frames a pair of warm brown eyes that she could get lost in. The spark of mischief that resides there puts her on edge. He’s an angel, and if life has taught her anything, it’s that they’re not to be trusted.

“Has Father sent me a pet?” he asks. “I've grown weary of living amongst his other rejects.” He circles her with a look of scrutiny, and she turns with him, not allowing him behind her back. “Are you one of those… humans he was always droning on about? You appear to be much more sentient than those half-verbal creatures, but I must say, you’re not much to look at.”

“Who are you?” she asks, her voice coming out in a rasp. The need to strike or flee consumes her every thought.

He grins, and it’s beautiful, and she has to remind herself that the most beautiful things are often the most deadly. “Call me Lucifer," he croons. "And just who might you be?"

Lucifer. She’s heard that name before, falling off of the tongues of the other angels like a curse. She doesn't respond, and dodges away from the hand that reaches for her. 

His expression flickers, a look of hurt crossing his face before smoothing over once more. "Right. I'll be off, then."

Without thinking, she grabs his arm to stop him. He looks to her hand on his arm, and then to her, with a raised eyebrow. She doesn’t understand it either, but he's the first person—first anyone that she's been able to talk to in a very long time.

"Lilith," her mouth speaks. "My name is Lilith."

* * *

Chloe startles awake, tucked into Lucifer’s side. Her head pounds, like someone has put her skull in a vice and squeezed. Sharp fangs bite into her brain, and her soul vibrates with the force of it. Her heart hitches and thuds, taking her breath away.

That dream wasn’t like the rest. Somehow, Lucifer was there. She looks to his sleeping face, panic welling in her chest. These aren't dreams. They're memories. 

She stumbles to the bathroom. The walls of the penthouse warp and distort before crumbling to basalt columns. Bile burns up her throat, and she retches into the toilet. 

She's in two places at once, a dark chasm of rock and the sleek tile of the bathroom blurring together. She's two people at once, and Chloe is unravelling. Her sense of self is coming apart at the seams with each resurfacing memory. She doesn't know what she'll be at the end of it all.

Consciousness fading, the penthouse gives way completely to the darkness of Hell.  Fire licks up her arms, and she burns.

The walls breathe the name of Lilith. 

_ You've returned. _


	6. We, the Drowned

Lilith opens her eyes.

The blinding lights of the bathroom remind her too much of waking up in the warehouse, and she scrambles up before she can think better of it. Her head throbs in protest, and she squeezes her eyes shut against the pain. Using the counter for balance, she stands up in front of the mirror. The reality staring back at her was unfathomable only minutes before, but is impossible to deny now. Her reflection is wrong. Of  _ course _ it’s wrong. This isn’t what she’s supposed to look like. This isn’t who she is, no matter how much her heart tries to tell her otherwise.

No matter how much she wants it to be.

_Chloe._ The name feels like a mockery now. Bitter laughter bubbles up before she can stop it. She’s spent the past few decades on Earth living as an average human, as _Chloe Decker._ Her life was a joke this whole time. Miracle, indeed.

She splashes her face with water to clear her head and leaves the bathroom on shaky legs. Lucifer still rests on the couch, undisturbed by her panicked exit from earlier.  At the sight of him, Lilith aches and resents in equal measure; a tangled mess of emotions that she can't hope to unravel.  He looks at peace, unguarded in a way that he never was in Hell. 

He shifts in his sleep and mumbles into the couch cushion, and it snaps her back to the situation at hand. Their shared history in Hell changes everything, ruins everything. He would hate her if he knew the truth about who she really is. She can’t be here right now, surrounded by a happiness that she almost had. She makes it into the elevator in quick strides, and pushes the button for Lux with a ferocity that is unwarranted.

Somehow, for some reason, God sent her soul into the body of a child, to grow up among Adam’s descendants as one of them. It wasn’t her life, not really. Having the rug pulled out from under her is hardly a new thing, though. She’s had her life ripped away from her once; as agonizing as it will be, she can brave it again. But why now, why LA? It couldn’t be a coincidence that she ran into Lucifer, either. God doesn’t do coincidences. How did she even get here, as Chloe? The last thing she remembers from Hell is—

Is...

A sharp pain drills into her skull and leaves her gasping for breath. The elevator dings, announcing its arrival at Lux, and she stumbles out.  The bartender, looking tired from the night, gives her a knowing smile as she passes.

“Have a good day, detective," he calls when she’s almost at the exit. She tries not to flinch.

_ Not her, not her. _

It's still dark out when Lilith pulls her—Chloe's—cruiser out of Lux’s underground parking. The city is starting to wake up despite the early hour, and every red light, every car that cuts her off raises the tension in her shoulders up a notch. At least she has the day off. She doesn’t have to worry about work. 

Not that it matters.

Somehow, she ends up at a beach. She leaves her car behind and makes her way to the shore. The sky has started to change colour in the early morning light, and it’s just enough to see by. She collapses on the beach, uncaring of the sand that will get all over her clothes. She rests her head in her hands and takes deep, gulping breaths of ocean air as she tries to get her mind to stop spinning. 

Something is wrong. Even now, after peeling back the lies to expose the truth, she’s missing things. Huge chunks of time are gone. She doesn’t feel whole.  Her memories are like water slipping through her fingers. The more she tries to hold on, the more it slips away.

A familiar ringtone startles her out of her own head. She fumbles the device out of her pocket. Trixie’s grin lights up the screen, and her heart lurches at the sight. In her mad scramble to get away from the penthouse, she had forgotten all about her. She stares at the photo of her daughter’s face as the phone rings and rings before going to voicemail. 

A daughter. She has a daughter. She wants nothing more than to wrap her in her arms and never let her go. She flips through her phone, looking through her most recent pictures of Trixie. She's getting so big; quickly growing out of being a kid and approaching her teens at a terrifying pace, and she's hers and-

And…

She’s not… Chloe was just a lie. It was all a lie. And Trixie…

Something fierce in her lashes out at that, an angry lioness who would  _ never _ abandon her child, not for anything.  Ever. Except that’s not true, is it?  _ Chloe _ would never.  Lilith, abandoned Maze and all the other Lilim. They may not have been her children in the traditional sense, but she created them all the same, and left them to fend for themselves when they were of no use to her. Too lost in her own anger that she didn’t see, didn’t care how she hurt anyone around her. 

What was she even trying so hard to achieve? She reaches for the memory, but comes up with nothing. All she has are dark fragments that are horrifying in the light of day. She can’t imagine doing that. She would _never_ do that. Except she did. The line between Chloe and Lilith blurs and crashes together. She is an upholder of justice standing up for the wronged; she is a cornered animal with nothing left to lose.

Her thoughts spiral. Not just to Trixie and Maze, but everyone else in her life that she cares about. Lucifer. Dan. Linda. Ella. Amenadiel. Her mom. Her dad. Everyone she’s ever met, she’s ever loved is here. That wasn’t nothing.  She doesn’t want to abandon LA and everything she’s built here. It may have only been a few decades, but when she was just Chloe, it was everything. 

A gentle breeze blows through her hair. The tide creeps ever closer. 

“Chloe Decker?” a voice calls from behind.

Lilith turns to the voice without thought, her mind catching on the name only after she responds to it. A blow to the back of the head sends her reeling, and everything goes black.

* * *

The harsh light from the star Lucifer himself created rouses him from his slumber. He glares up at it. Ungrateful thing. He shifts, turning to curl around the body beside him. His eyes pop open when he comes up empty. The detective isn’t there. He sinks back into the couch with a sigh. Perhaps she stopped off in the kitchen to find something to eat. He can’t imagine that she’ll have much luck; it’s unlikely there’s anything edible left here after all this time.

He checks the bedroom just in case she decided to relocate to a proper bed some time during the night, but the sheets appear undisturbed. He can hear the faucet running in the bathroom though, so he leaves her to it. 

After the way the detective had reacted last night, she could use a proper meal, not to mention some well-deserved rest. They might even need to talk.  It breaks his heart to see her falling apart like this, and it frightens him to think of what could be happening to her. He doesn’t know how to help her.

Breakfast, though, is something he can do.

He pokes around the kitchen, taking stock of anything that he could use to make some semblance of a meal. There isn’t much here, and what little there is won’t make for a proper meal. The detective will not take well to a breakfast of whipped cream straight from the can. Instead, he resorts to takeout, and sticks to her favourites that hopefully haven’t changed since he left. 

While waiting for their food to arrive, he takes another look through the library. The detective’s trip down to Hell has to have something to do with her being a miracle. The book he looked through last night wasn’t helpful, not that he expected much.

The elevator chimes, announcing the delivery boy’s arrival. Tipping him generously, Lucifer checks the time. The detective has been in the bathroom for a while. She should be out by now. He pads through the bedroom to the hall beyond. The bathroom door hangs open.

“Detective?” he calls.

No response.

He pokes his head in. She isn’t there, and the faucet has been left running. Strange. He checks the other rooms, the balcony, the second floor of the library, but there is no sign of her anywhere. A quick hop down to Lux confirms that she’s not there either. With increasing worry, he checks the garage. The parking spot reserved just for her is empty. She’s gone.

Why would she leave right now? She knows the danger that she’s in, knows the danger that the hound poses. This isn’t like her. Then again, she wasn’t much like herself last night either. Dad knows what desperation will drive Chloe Decker to do.

He gives her a call, hoping that wherever she is, she’ll at least pick up. Every unanswered ring sends his worry up a notch. The familiar sound of her voicemail answers the call and he hangs up.

Maybe she just went home. He flies to her apartment, not bothering with the Corvette. There’s no sign of her, and that worries him. There’s no sign of the hound either, and that worries him more.  He has no idea what the hound, or Lilith, would do to her. 

He could never admit to it, but he installed a phone tracker on the detective’s phone a while back for… less than wholesome purposes. He never could get a high quite like he can while she’s nearby, and he may have abused her location services to meet that end a time or two. The app connects in quick order, but the location gives him pause. That’s the beach where they first kissed. Why would she go there?

When he arrives, there are a few families milling about, though the beach is hardly crowded this early in the day. He can’t see the detective, and her cruiser isn’t parked anywhere nearby, but the GPS still insists that she’s here. He tries calling her again, hoping against hope that she will just pick up. He hears her phone ring off in the distance, and he follows the sound. Her phone rests half-buried in the sand amidst the evidence of a scuffle.

He’s too late. Lilith, or the hound, or both, must have gotten to her first. His heart in his throat, he dials Maze. When she picks up, he doesn’t wait for her to speak. “The detective is gone, and so is the hound.”

Fumbling comes from the other end of the line before Maze’s voice comes through the speaker. “What the hell, Lucifer! You were supposed to watch her!”

“I was! We fell asleep on the couch, and when I woke up she was gone. She was upset last night, but I don't know why she would just  _ leave.  _ I tracked her phone to the beach, but she’s not here.” He lets out a shaky breath. “I don’t know how to find her, Mazikeen.”

“Text me the address, I'll be there ASAP."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! sorry this is late and returning on a short chapter! i got hit by a bout of self-consciousness about my writing, so i had to fight through that. i was also really struggling with lilith's characterization, but i think it turned out okay in the end. i'm hoping to post chapter 7 on tuesday, and chapter 8 on thursday


	7. Were Before and All Along

Lilith was born with eyes green as forest trees and hair spun from gold. In her village, it was seen as a bad omen, a warning sent from the gods. 

They were right.

* * *

Their village was situated in a small valley near a crystal clear river. It was secluded and protected. The mountains stood like watchful guardians around the place that Lilith called home.

Lilith was one blessed with an internal flame, and she lived with the Elders to hone that power. She cleaned and cooked for them, and tended to their gardens and livestock. In turn, they taught her everything they knew. It was gruelling work, but it was worth it. Lilith learned fast, and she was good at it. She could set a fire alight with a flick of her wrist and could touch on the mind of a raging beast and calm it to docility. 

Her teacher, one of the greatest flamebearers their village had ever known, had burned out her own flame while breathing life back into her dying partner. Her knowledge was vast, but she could only be passed on through words. Lilith couldn’t imagine making that sacrifice. Her flame was a part of her, and she could never give that up.

Her life in their little village was quiet but happy, until the angel arrived. On wings larger than any bird, he swept into the village one day. The Elders came out to greet him, and he looked down at them in disdain, as if staring down a particularly annoying bug. His eyes lit up when he spotted Lilith, and she froze.

“There you are,” said the angel. He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her along behind him. Lilith dug her heels into the ground, hit and clawed at the hand wrapped around her arm, but nothing she did stopped him. The grip he had on her was like stone. “Now, where is the other one?”

She called on her flame, and sparks lashed out of her fingertips and up the angel’s arm. His grip loosened, and she slipped out of his grasp. He glared at her and grabbed her again, and she felt her flame reduce to embers. It wasn’t gone, just suppressed. She couldn’t draw on it, not anymore.

“Fear not. I mean you no harm, human.” He spoke in a calm melodious voice, but his unrelenting grip on her arm spoke otherwise. 

“Please, just let me go,” she begged.

“I cannot do that. This is God’s will.”

God? Which god? This didn’t sound like the workings of any god she knew.

“What do you want with me?” she choked out. 

“You have been chosen for a higher purpose. You need not concern yourself with these…” the angel looked around the village and scrunched his nose in disgust, “...soulless creatures anymore. There are greener pastures than this in the Garden.”

He said the word like it was a holy land, but she couldn’t help but feel like the place would be where she found her end.

She reached out for the Elders, her family with pleading arms, but none of them stepped forth to help her. They just watched her with fearful eyes. They already knew she was doomed.

The angel came to a stop outside of one of the homes and dragged someone else out. It was Adam, a man around her age that she didn’t know very well. Adam was an orphan, one of many who lost their parents to hunting accidents. He was a part of the hunting party, and she was too busy helping the Elders to intermingle with the others her age. His deep brown eyes looked just as terrified as she felt.

The angel spread his wings wide behind him, and with a great gust of air, they were ripped into the sky. Pain shot through Lilith’s shoulder as she was wrenched into the air by her wrist alone. She grappled for the angel’s arm with her other hand, no longer trying to get away, but instead hanging on for dear life. She dangled in the air, higher in the air than she thought possible, The speed they moved at stung her eyes and made tears stream down her face. The village below them grew further and further away. Everything looked so small and insignificant from up here. No wonder the angel looked at everyone like they were dirt. She shut her eyes to the onslaught of wind and tried to ignore the fact that the only thing keeping her from death was the angel’s grip around her wrist. 

Lilith and Adam landed in a heap in the middle of a lush forest. The angel stood in front of them, silent and unmoving. Lilith didn’t move from her spot on the ground, her legs too wobbly to stand on. 

“Fear not, humans, for you have been chosen by God,” the angel spoke. “You have been blessed with souls from birth, which will allow you and your offspring to live on after death, in the Silver City.”

She didn’t understand. A soul? She had never heard of such a thing. She had her Flame, but Adam didn’t possess one, and he was here nonetheless. What did this mean for her loved ones? Would they disappear into oblivion after they died? Would she have to carry on without them? She didn't want eternity if it meant she could never see them again.

“We leave you in this, the Garden of Eden, to prosper. You will like it here.” It sounded like more of a command than an assurance.

And then the angel was gone. Lilith’s flame ignited within her once again, and she let them burn through to her fingertips. She didn’t want this. She didn’t ask for this. In less than a day, her entire life had been uprooted by a creature of legend. Angels were supposed to be kind. 

Adam cleared his throat. “Lilith—”

“No.”

There had to be a way out of here. Standing up, Lilith picked a direction at random and started to walk. Adam’s footfalls followed behind her, but other than that, it was silent. There was no rustling of wind, or the sound of crickets or frogs. Instead, an eerie silence hung over the woods. She didn’t like it.

Before long, Lilith came upon a wall blocking her path. Made of a smooth white stone, it was taller than any tree. There was no way to climb it. She followed the wall’s edge until her feet grew tired and the sound of Adam following behind grew more distant. Up ahead, a light shone through the shadows cast by the wall. She sped up. An opening must be there.

An angel stood at the gate. He was a different angel than the first. He narrowed his eyes when he saw them, and drew his sword in warning. The blade ignited as he did. 

“You are not to leave the Garden,” he spoke. 

“But we don’t want to be here,” Lilith said.

“It is His Will.”

Dismayed, Lilith walked back into the woods with Adam once more following behind. They did their best to make a shelter out of anything they could find. Lilith sparked a fire to life to keep them warm in the cold night. Turning her back to Adam, she curled up on the ground.

They were trapped here. All they had now was each other.

* * *

At first, they clung to each other. Adam was the only familiarity in this strange new world. The Garden, as the angels kept calling it, had everything they needed to survive, but her chest was hollow with everything that it lacked. There were no beasts here; their only worries were hunger and loneliness. The loneliness ate away at her. Her circle of confidants had shrunk down to one, and he was a poor one at that. After the first few panicked days, Adam seemed to become strangely content in this place that was more prison than paradise. He didn’t understand her desire to be free of the Garden’s walls.

The angel said they were meant to be together, but Lilith felt no draw to Adam. He clearly felt different though. She caught Adam staring at her sometimes as if she was his entire world. The weight of his expectation was suffocating.

She guarded her flame fiercely. It was the only thing she had to remember her old life by.

She continued her daily patrol of the wall. It was the only thing that kept her going. The angel was always there, guarding the gates with that flaming sword, until he wasn’t. She almost walked right by, not truly expecting  _ this _ part of her routine to change. She poked her head out into the world beyond. Her heart lurched. She recognized a far off copse of trees. Home wasn’t too far from here. 

She glanced back into the garden. She shouldn’t leave without Adam, but he seemed almost too comfortable with the life they had here. Besides, she didn’t know when the angel would return. This may be her only chance. 

Taking one last look around, she made a break for the treeline outside. The forest here, the real forest, was alive with the sound of crickets and birds, and the scuffle of animals moving through the underbrush. It felt like home in a way that the Garden never did.

When dusk came, she found an empty cave to rest in. Protected from the outside winds, she curled up against the back wall and fell into a dreamless slumber. The next day came with muscle aches and a gnawing hunger in her gut. She had never run this far before, but the thought of going home kept her moving forward.

As she entered the valley that surrounded her village, she could smell the hint of a fire floating through the air. Exhausted but unable to help the smile that pulled at her lips, she picked up the pace. Somebody was cooking. As she drew nearer though, she realized she was wrong.

Oh so very wrong.

The air grew hazy, the smoke thick in the air. It burned her lungs as she fought to breathe through it. She was almost at the clearing when she stopped dead.

The village was gone. 

The entirety of the area had been levelled to the ground and burned black. Houses were no more than piles of rubble. The smell of burned flesh permeated her nose and made her gag. A charred doll laid on the ground nearby. Tears burned at her eyes. No one had survived.

She stopped in front of the still smouldering ruins of the place she once called home. Remnants of her life floated through the air, reduced to nothing but dust. She sank to her knees. The ash cushioned her landing; the feel of it clinging to her was revolting.

This soul, this thing in her chest, she didn’t want it. She didn’t want eternity without them. 

The rustling of cloth came from behind. Her hopes raised. Maybe someone survived. Maybe—

“You have disobeyed our Father. For this, you will be condemned.”

She closed her eyes at the words. Only an angel could have a voice so deceptively beautiful. 

“Why?” she choked out.

“They attempted to subvert the Will of our Father. For that, they were punished.” He said it as if it made sense, as if it justified laying waste to everyone she loved, but it didn’t.

There were no benevolent gods. The world was not good. Everyone she loved was dust in the eyes of the so-called almighty.

The angel took her away, but she left her heart behind.

* * *

Lilith’s head swims as she comes to, her face mashed into carpet. Metal bites into the skin of her wrists where they’re bound behind her. It’s too dark to see. An engine rumbles in the background, and then the ground shifts underneath her. She must be in a car.

She hadn’t recognized the voice of whoever grabbed her, but they certainly knew her—Chloe. They knew Chloe. But maybe it’s all just semantics at this point.

The vehicle comes to an abrupt halt and Lilith slides into the back of the trunk. The engine shudders to a stop. She hears a familiar squeak of a car door swinging open, followed by the crunch of gravel underfoot. The trunk opens to the summer sky, blinding Lilith for a moment. She squints against the onslaught as her captor grabs her and throws her over a shoulder. Lilith struggles in her hold and beats against her back, but the woman doesn’t flinch. She’s strong, unnaturally so for her tiny frame, and Lilith realizes that it must be a demon. Whoever it is, she can command them to put her down.

“Hey—”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Her voice doesn’t even give the demon pause. There’s no power in the command that still rests, unspoken, on her tongue.  She reaches for her flame, intent on burning the demon out of its unwitting host, but comes up empty. Not even smouldering embers remain. How is it gone?

They enter a building—an empty office complex from what she can see. They wind through twisting hallways and pass through an open area with a high ceiling before entering another hall. The demon moves through a door and drops her to the ground without warning. Lilith tries to stand, but she’s kicked back down before she can get her feet under her. There is the press of a needle into her neck, and the world quickly becomes hazy before falling away once again.

* * *

_ There is the blinding pain of a bullet ripping through her neck, and then the lack of it. _

_ “Monkey?” Her father’s voice calls out to her. She can almost see him in front of her, healthy and whole, both elated and gutted to see her again. She can’t help but feel the same. It’s been so long, but it’s too soon all the same. _

_ She knows what this is. She isn’t supposed to be here, not yet. She can’t leave behind her life and everyone in it, She can’t let Trixie grow up with one less parent just like she did. As much as she misses her dad, she’ll get to see him again some day. _

_ A flame burns bright in her chest. She grabs for it and pushes its power into her failing body until the flame burns out. _

* * *

Chloe opens her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry i'm not yet caught up on comment replies. i promise to answer them all once i'm done chapter 8. this chapter is also a little less edited than i'd like it to be, but i'm really starting to feel the time crunch. i might come back and edit this fic after i've calmed down from 5a. i just hope these later chapters make sense as is. one more chapter to go, and then i'll be free!


	8. Again, Again

Maze tracks the locator on the detective’s car to a building across town. When they arrive, her cruiser is parked out back, and the trunk rests open. They make their way into the building and move through it silently, clearing every room they come across for any sign of Lilith or the detective.

The winding corridor opens up to an open office space that looks like it hasn’t seen use in several years. An old fluorescent light flickers overhead, trying and failing to ignite. Shoe trodden paths are worn into the carpet from years of workers traversing around desks and other obstacles that no longer occupy the space. What few items of furniture remain are dated and dusty. On one of the desks sits a woman who plays with a familiarly curved knife. Lucifer recognizes her face from the file Maze had shown him not two hours ago. It’s Leila Douglas, the murder victim from the detective’s recent case. Lucifer’s eyes burn bright with his anger. 

“Lilith!” he calls across the room, and she looks up from where she’s picking at her nails with a demon dagger. She tilts her head to the side before she throws it back and laughs. The nerve. 

“Lilith? You think I’m  _ Lilith? _ No one’s seen that bitch in eons!” she says.

“But… you have to be. Why else would Cerberus be on Earth?”

The demon gives him a withering glare in response.

“There aren’t supposed to be any more demons here. How did you escape without detection?”

The demon rolls her eyes. “You made a move after doing nothing for decades and you expected no one to notice? You left Hell, so I followed you out, simple as that. Y’know, you’re really not as sneaky as you think you are.”

Lucifer’s blood runs cold. He had only been on Earth for a few days. If one demon had cottoned on to his departure, then there were likely others that had as well. Could Cerberus have been a ploy by Lilith to allow her and several other demons to escape while he went to investigate, or—

The demon lolls her head to the side. “Are you done brooding?” she asks with a wave of her knife. “I’d kind of like to kill you now.”

Maze steps forward. “That’s not happening.”

“I know, I know, you’re not dumb enough to get so close that I can use my blades.” The demon pulls out a gun and points it at him. “But with that detective of yours around, this can kill you just as well, can’t it?”

* * *

Chloe finds herself handcuffed to a desk in a cramped office space. A musty smell permeates the room, and is bare of any other furniture. The door doesn’t look like it has a lock, if only she could get to it.

She pushes back against the desk, testing its weight. Luckily, the demon just chained her to one of the legs, and the desk itself isn’t that heavy. If she could just lift up the desk somehow...

A quiet scuffling comes from behind the door, and Chloe freezes. Something heavy throws itself against the door. The door groans and bends under the blow. Another blow comes, and then another. The doorframe warps under each successive impact until the door comes free from the latch and flies open. At the sight of the intruder, she relaxes. It’s a dog—her dog, shaggy, fire-red coat and all. 

“Hey Cerb,” she says. He perks up at the nickname and trots up to her, tail wagging. He leans his weight on her and stares up at her with those deep black eyes, asking for pets. She would oblige him if her hands weren’t bound behind her back. “Can you get me out of these? We need to leave.”

Cerberus carefully bites at the handcuffs. His sharp teeth and strong jaw lash through the metal easily. Chloe stands, flexing her hands to try and get some feeling back into them. She pokes her head out of the doorway. It doesn’t seem like her kidnapper heard the door breaking in, but they need to move fast just in case. 

Retracing what she remembers of her kidnapper’s path, they slink through the halls. The distant sound of voices echoes through the space, and she follows the sound. It sounds like the demon who abducted her, as well as Lucifer and Maze. Chloe walks faster. They could be in danger, especially with her here. 

The hall opens up to the large room that she vaguely remembers from before, and Choe peers in. Maze and Lucifer stand side by side, faced off with the demon. The demon holds a gun, which is pointed directly at Lucifer.

“You’re vulnerable around her; I don’t even need a Hell-forged blade to kill you. That little human of yours just walked right in and said that in front of all of us, like an idiot,” the demon says.

Lucifer growls in response. Cerberus does the same from where he crouches beside Chloe, and she shushes him. So that’s how the demons knew to target her. In hindsight, it wasn’t her best move. Now though, she needs to get Maze and Lucifer out of here safely. If she could just distract the demon enough to get its attention off of Lucifer...

“Cerb, I have an idea.”

* * *

Lucifer stares down the gun pointed at him. If the detective is as close as the demon claims, he can’t go about this rashly.

“Hey!” a voice shouts from across the room. It’s the detective, in the same clothes as last night, and looking a little worse for wear. The demon whips around to face her, gun training away from him.

“How did you get out?” the demon growls.

The detective shrugs. “The cuffs weren’t that tight.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, Lucifer catches sight of Cerberus stalking behind the demon. His form shifts and grows. Two additional heads sprout from his neck to join the first, and his ears brush the ceiling as he reaches his full height. He lets out a snarl. The demon turns to face him, gun clattering to the floor at the sight of the hulking beast behind her.

“What the f—”

Cerberus pushes the demon to the ground with a giant paw. The demon wheezes at the crushing weight.

“You need to go home,” the detective says. Leila Douglas’ body falls limp as the demon returns to Hell. There is no Command in her voice, but Lucifer knows that tone. It’s Lilith’s. Of course. She’s been here all along. Why else would the hound leave Hell right as the detective was shot, only to show up at her home?

Lucifer strides across the room to her with quick steps, his heart in his throat. He grabs her by the shoulders and shakes her. “What did you do to her?” he says, voice trembling with rage. 

“What?” Lilith breathes. The shock on her face looks so real, he almost believes it. He won’t have her playing dumb with him though, not now.

“What did you do to Chloe?” he chokes out, her name getting caught in his throat.

Her eyes widen in a look of understanding. A hand comes up to one of his, and he winces at the gentle touch. “Lucifer, it  _ is _ Chloe, I swear it’s me. I t's always been me."

“No.” He shakes his head at her words. He looks over her shoulder to the hound, who has returned to his smaller, one-headed form. “Why else would Cerberus be here if it weren’t for you,  _ Lilith?” _ He spits out her name with venom.

But she just shakes her head, a sad smile pulling at her lips.  The look in her eyes is so familiar, and he wants to get lost in it, wants to believe, but he can’t take another blow like this if it turns out to be a lie. “I’m not just… I’m not just a miracle.” His heart stutters at her words, because oh, she knows, she  _ knows. _ “I’m—a reincarnation of Lilith, I guess. Something about almost dying like I did brought all those memories back. I don’t know what that makes me, but I’m still Chloe. I’m still me. I  _ never _ lied to you, not about this." She cradles his face in her hands with a soft smile, and the only thing he wants in the world is to believe her. "It's me, okay? It's me." 

He searches her eyes, desperate and hopeful. Her worry shines through in her expression: the concern for others that she puts above all else, and it’s just so  _ Chloe _ that he knows she’s telling the truth. 

_ “Chloe.” _ Her name on his lips is like a reassurance of fact, and he’s not sure if it’s meant for him or for her. All the tension that he has held in his body since he found her phone on the beach releases at once, and he collapses into her arms. “Oh, thank Dad,” he mumbles into her shoulder. Gentle fingers run through his hair, and he can’t help but melt at the touch. 

Before long, her fingers freeze in his hair, and he looks up to her in concern. She’s not looking at him, though. Instead, she stares past his shoulder, a look of pain in her eyes.

“Maze…”

He turns to see Maze by the doorway, where she’s shaking her head and backing away. Betrayal is written into the downturn of her mouth. She turns and runs out of the room. 

“Maze!” Chloe disentangles herself from his hold and runs after Maze. Lucifer follows the both of them, but by the time he makes it outside, it’s just Chloe standing by herself. He comes to a stop beside her. 

“I need to apologize to Maze. She thinks I abandoned her—or Lilith did.” Chloe winces and massages her temple. “I don’t know.”

“She may need some time to process. Lilith really hurt her,” he says.

Chloe deflates. “I know.”

He knows Chloe, and he knows that she would never hurt someone like that, but the way that Lilith treated Maze still rankles him. He understands how Maze feels. Lingering bitterness over motherly abandonment is what brought them together in Hell, after all.

And speaking of Hell, now that their demon is dealt with, he has no reason to stay here any longer. He can’t let another demon escape, especially if they know that Chloe is his weakness.

“As much as I’d like to stay, I think it’s about time I go,” he says.

Chloe stares into the distance, looking thoughtful. “You know, I could send Cerberus to guard the gates. It’s not a permanent solution, but he’ll be able to hold the demons until we figure out a better way,” she says.

Hope blooms in Lucifer’s chest. He squashes it mercilessly. “Are you sure?” he asks.

Chloe nods, “Yeah, I… I have a lot to figure out, and I could really use your help.”

Cerberus whines from behind them, and when had he arrived? Chloe reaches down and scratches his head.

“It won’t be for as long this time, okay?” she says to the hound. “I’ll still remember you when you get back.” The hound gives Chloe one final bump with his nose before walking forlornly towards Lucifer.

Lucifer picks up the hound. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Chloe stifling a laugh. He looks down to the hound cradled in his arms like a baby, who looks as uncomfortable with the situation as Lucifer himself feels.

“I’ll be just a moment.” He spreads his wings and flies down to Hell. He leaves Cerberus at the gates, returned to the position that he once held long ago. He pats the hound’s head, and he gets a playful growl in return. He returns to Earth, this time to stay. Chloe waits for him right where he left her.

“Come on, Lucifer. Let’s get you home,” she says.  _ Home. _ He warms at the thought. She smiles and reaches for his hand, and he marvels at the casual intimacy of the act, that he gets to stay and enjoy her company for as long as he desires. He still doesn’t know what his father is up to, placing Chloe here on Earth, but they’ll figure it out.

Together.

* * *

_ Lilith breathes hard, already feeling faint from blood loss. She squints through the thick cloud of ash that obscures her vision. When the ash settles, a child with long black hair and dark skin sits in the centre of the circle of blood and bone. The child flexes her fingers, watching the movement as if entranced. There are no additional heads, no wings, no claws, no spines. She’s perfect and human and whole. Vindication alights in Lilith’s chest.  _

_ “Mazikeen,” Lilith says, giving this one a name of her own.  _

_ The child turns to Lilith with wide eyes, and Lilith’s stomach drops. The other half of her face is a gnarled mess of rotting flesh haloing a milky white eyeball. She’s another failure.  _

_ Lilith stands from her crouch, her head swimming with the effort. Her blood still running down her arms, she sighs and walks away. She really thought it would work this time. Behind her, the demon lets out a confused cry that shifts to distress as the sound of fighting breaks out. Lilith doesn’t look back. _

* * *

Chloe wakes from her dream, her face wet with tears. She feels sick. If she had done something like that to Trixie... Wherever she is, Maze is hurting.

Chloe pulls up her text history with Maze.  _ I'm here when you're ready to talk, _ she sends off, and it joins the wall of texts she’s already sent. She stares at the screen as the message ticks to ‘read’ but gets no response, just like the rest.

Clutching her phone to her chest, Chloe tries to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and there you have it! thank you so much for joining me on this journey, and for all of your lovely comments. they mean the world to me. this is the longest thing i've ever written. i can't believe i made it here. there were so many times where i wanted to just hand this idea off to more experienced hands, but i'm really glad that that 6 months of angsting over the plot finally paid off! i do have plans for a sequel or three, but for now i'm going to take a much-needed break and see how 5a plays out. until next time! 👋

**Author's Note:**

> all chapter titles are lyrics from 'we, the drowned' by lisa hannigan


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